Gabriela Brodska with her husband and friends in Marianske Lazne

In the photograph the first on the left is my husband Ondrej Brodsky. I'm the second from the left. Standing beside me are some friends of ours. The photo was taken in 1945 in Marianske Lazne, Marienbad.

Before the war my husband had been a technical manager in a co-op in Zilina where they manufactured spirits, cognac and whatnot. He was there until it all started happening. My husband emigrated in 1939 after the Republic fell apart. He emigrated to Poland. My husband was a Social Democrat, so he was listed as a political emigrant. And then, when war broke out, they went further on. There was a large group of boys from Czechoslovakia. And they joined the army when the first brigade was being formed, which was a solely Czechoslovak brigade. So he spent the whole war as a soldier, right to the end.

After the war they offered him a factory and I don't know what else, as a member of the foreign legion, he had been decorated several times. He also got a war cross; that was the highest decoration at the time. My husband said that he didn't care to be some factory owner, but that he wanted to work. At first he worked in army administration, he was this housing officer, a bureaucrat. At that time my husband was already retired, but because the state of his health was bad, he was reevaluated. After his return he was in the army for about a year and a half. He was listed as having a military disability pension.