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This I know exactly, it's from the year 1946 or 1947. It's in Marianske Lazne [Marienbad]. My parents, Ervin Kosiner and Hedvika Kosinerova, and I. My father was there for treatment. He'd had three heart attacks and my mother and I had come to visit him for the weekend. Then my future husband, Petr Prochazka, came to be with us as well.
My father was a big joker, he loved humor. He worked very hard all his life, today they call it being a workaholic. That's exactly him. I would never see him until the evening. He was born on 16th June 1900 in Bukoly, near Kralupy, and then attended Czech Technical University in Prague. He studied civil engineering and worked all his life as a structural engineer - he designed large chemical plants. That's why during the war he was transferred to the Wulkow concentration camp as chief engineer.
He died in October 1972 of his fourth heart attack. He had the first and second in Wulkow and the third in about 1947. The whole time he was being treated at IKEM, in Krc. When my father died, we spent a year looking for a place in whatever cemetery, because my father had explicitly said: 'Don't you dare put me in a Jewish cemetery.' That was his explicit wish. He didn't say why, he simply didn't want it and we respected his wishes. Though simplest of all would have been to bury him at the Jewish cemetery. There, there's tons of room. Finally we found this little spot on Letna.
My mother was named Hedvika, nee Sternova. She was born on 25th February 1909 in Kamberk in Southern Bohemia. She died in November 1987 in Prague. She fell and broke her hip, but because she was a serious diabetic, she didn't make it. She actually died of diabetic shock. She attended elementary school in Kamberk and then for three years traveled to Tabor for family school.
Very early on, in 1928, she then married my father. They were married at the Old Town Hall in Prague. They met through my mother's sister Marie. Her future husband, Frantisek Faktor, who was my father's classmate from university, used to go to Kamberk to see her. And one time Frantisek says to my father: 'They've got this nice looking younger girl, come there with me.' And that's all it took. They went out for about three years, my mother was 19 when she was married. So it wouldn't even have been possible sooner than that. My father was nine years older. By the way, my son-in-law is ten years older than my younger daughter, Jana, and it's doesn't matter at all. The same as my father, my mother wasn't at all religiously inclined, they didn't practice anything at all. She had a generous nature, absolutely unselfish.
