Sarka Brod-Hyland

This is my daughter Sarka Brod-Hyland, this time as a young lady. The photo was taken sometime in the 1970s in Prague at Strahov, where Sarka had an apartment; she lived there with her grandmother. She had this large brass bed there, as can be seen in the photo. Sarka had a hard time tolerating the occupation, and that which followed it, the period of normalization. In 1969 I was on a study term in Germany, at that time I was considering staying there, they were offering me work at university. When my wife and daughter came to visit me, I told them about this possibility, but they didn't want to emigrate, they didn't want to live in a foreign country. That's why I returned to the country at the end of my stipendium, subsequently I was expelled from the Party and from work as an undesirable, and so I went and pumped water. The same fate met my wife: she also had to leave her job at the time, and her career of many years as a cleaning woman began. Our daughter also had various problems, I think that at the end of the 1960s she was still a member of the Pioneers, but they weren't accepting her anywhere any more, it was unthinkable that the daughter of an expelled person would be involved in anything. She didn't even want to be. I think that she quickly realized what was what. Other things also went on, above all they also harassed her, if she had a driver's license, then she had to take the exams again, they summoned my wife for retesting, my driver's license they confiscated, when our daughter wanted to go on an art class trip to France; they didn't let her... Mainly though she didn't get to go further in school. She had the best marks, the best recommendations, wrote the best entrance exams, but Brodova was simply in the index, so they automatically put her aside and she didn't interest them any more. She then worked for a few years as a window dresser in various shops.