Jana Vydrová (1939)

You did everything you could so that I lose my daughter, my mum said during an interrogation after I emigrated.

Jana Vydrová, née Schmausová, was born on October 6, in Prague. She has a sister Helena, who is a year and a half older. Jana’s great grandfather was the important inventor František Křižík, who died when she was two. Her father, Gustav Schmaus, graduated of the music conservatory, her mother came from a business family, played tennis and rode a horse. In 1939, Gustav Schmaus and his colleague bought, from a Jewish businessman, a factory in Pilsen. In the same year they moved to Bechyně, where they spent the war relatively peacefully in the family villa. In 1945 they moved to Pilsen and saw the city being liberated by U. S. troops, with some of whom they established lifelong friendships. In 1948 her father’s business was nationalised by the communists and the family property seized. The family moved to Prague. Gustav Schmaus returned to music and played the violoncello in the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, while her mother trained as an accountant, but was sacked after a year due to he ... 

Czech emigration in the United States