Toman Brod with his brother Hanus on summer vacation

This photo was taken in 1937 in Libverda, and on it are my brother Hanus and I. We used to spend our summer holidays at the summer house in Libverda.

In the summer we used to go to a summer house. If I remember correctly, in the beginning it was only around Prague, when I was a small child we used to for example go to Revnice.

The first bigger holiday event was Doksy, Mach Lake, then for a few years it was Libverda, that's near Liberec, where we went for about three years, but because it was in the border region, where it wasn't all that pleasant to be in the 1930s, we spent our last summer vacation, in 1938, at Mala Skala near Turnov.

We would always go there for two months, the two of us, our mother, the cook, and the nanny. Our father had work, so he wasn't there regularly, he would come when he had the time, and then would again leave for Prague.

Besides us there were also other families there, some three, four would always be there. They were Jews. Some of them were our relatives; some were more distant relatives with whom my mother was in closer contact than with her own.

They were women that played bridge with her, and who had children, so we spent our summer vacation with them, we knew them from childhood. We spent beautiful, calm, secure times together.

I think that my brother and I were this normal pair. Sometimes we fought like cats and dogs, like all siblings sometimes fight or egg each other on.

But we of course also played ping-pong together, soccer, went swimming in the summer, skated, I really do think that we were a normal pair.

We neither loved each other a lot, nor did we hate each other. Well, of course in childhood it's a different relationship than in adulthood, so maybe that relationship would have changed.

Back then I was jealous of Hanus, he was older, stronger, so I tried to keep up with him. We had mutual friends. We were passionate sports nuts, we were soccer fans, I a Sparta fan and Hanus a Slavia fan.