Samuel Waldstein with family

This picture captures the shop of my grandfather Samuel Waldstein in Prestice in the year 1931. Standing in the doorway of the shop are my grandparents. On the right is Samuel Waldstein and on his right is my grandmother Matilda Waldstein, nee Vogel. Standing on the steps are their four daughters - Hedviga Glückauf, Marie Pick, Valerie Roth and my mother Marta Friedova (all nee Waldstein), but I don't know exactly which is which. The first on the left is my sister Erika Felixova, nee Friedova, with our nanny. I am most likely in the carriage, and right beside me, is my mother Marta. The small child in front of my grandparents is likely Hedviga's son Karel. My mother's father was a merchant. He had a so-called 'colonial' store. He sold everything that people in the village needed, for example flour, eggs, spices, coffee, peanuts, petroleum, whips etc. My grandmother used to help out. The store consisted of one large room, with an entrance from the street. The entrance door had a small bell. Behind the store was a kitchen with a fireplace where my grandparents usually spent their time. No-one was in the store all day, only when the little bell rang, one of my grandparents would come into the store and serve the customer. My grandparents' house was more or less in the middle of the main street, which ran up a steep hill. Prestice was built around only one long street. As I already said, the store was in the first room; behind it were the kitchen and a room they slept in. Upstairs was a living room for special occasions and two small rooms where we, the children, used to sleep when we were visiting our grandparents. Next to the house, on the left-hand side, was a driveway from the street into the courtyard. In the driveway there were bags of flour that was sold in the store. From the driveway one entered a small courtyard measuring eight by five meters. The courtyard was paved and kept neat and tidy. In the courtyard were outbuildings for storage of grain and coal. Grandpa never had any farm or domestic animals. Neither did they have any fields or servants. I practically don't remember a thing about my aunts on my mother's side. I only met them once a year at my grandfather's in Prestice, where we spent vacations together. Like me, my cousins on my mother's side were in those days very young, so we didn't have a lot of common experiences. I do remember, however, that they sent me as the youngest to Grandpa's store to steal peanuts. Grandpa would pretend that he didn't see me. Besides this we used to play cards with Grandpa, but that's all that I remember. All of Mother's sisters died in concentration camps together with their children and husbands. Only Marenka's husband Fredy Pick survived, who then remarried and settled in Varnsdorf. Among those few lucky ones that survived was also my mother's father.