Zdeněk Lochovský:

My grandfather František Lochovský came from Stradonice near Nižbor (district Beroun).
The name Lochovský may be associated with a small town Lochovice, which is not too far from Stradonice.
Stradonice itself is not significant but above the village rises an extensive hill, where an important Celtic settlement, so-called oppidum, was built more than two thousand years ago.
Celtic gold coins were found nearby particularly one very significant find in the 19th century. People called them 'rainbow coins' because they were sometimes found glistening after rain.

My grandfather learned to play the violin at an early age and it became his profession. From about 1920 until his retirement he was a member of the Czech Philharmonic.
Before the First World War, he led, with a few colleagues, a music school in Ostrava. Here he met my grandmother Maria and here was my father Jan born in 1913.
Jan had two sisters also born there: the elder Vlasta who died as a child and the younger Zdeňka who died in 1941.

In the summer of 1913 and 1914 the family stayed in Bad Ischl in Austria, where my grandfather played in the spa orchestra.
In 1913, emperor Franz Joseph I also spent his summer in Bad Ischl and celebrated his birthday there in August. Grandma saw him several times, as well as his visitors - King of Saxony and King of England.
Before the end of the war, the family moved to Prague. At first they lived on the Charles Square and for many years from 1919 in Čechova Street in Letná. That is not far from Vila.

My father's medical studies in Prague were interrupted in 1939 due to the forced closure of Czech universities.
So during the war Jan worked in the coal warehouse in Uhříněves. At that time the Lochovský family moved from Letná to Vinohrady, Třebízského Street.
In May 1945, during the Prague Uprising Jan helped as a paramedic treating wounded in Vinohrady Hospital.

After the war he completed his studies and was sent to practice in the hospital in Domažlice.
Then he became a military doctor stationed in Prague for a few years.
He met my mother on a joint ski trip to the mountains in Slovakia. It could have been in the winter of 1952/53. They always liked to go to the mountains.
My parents lived in Třebízského Street from 1953. My brother Petr was born the following year.

My grandfather František and grandmother Marie moved to the divided apartment on the ground floor of Vila U Písecké brány. It was an exchange with a family named Krákorovi.
My grandfather died soon after that.

In 1955, Jan was transferred to Hradec Králové. I was born there and in 1958 also my sister Jana. I don't remember our stay in Hradec.
Only recently, I have started to discover this metropolis of Eastern Bohemia and I like it.
I particularly admire the avant-garde architecture of Jan Kotěra (who started building there before the First World War) and Jan Gočár (between the wars).
The city is now striving to be registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In the autumn of 1958 we moved to Brno, where my father worked in the local military hospital in Zabrdovice.
We lived in a brand new building in Hrnčířská Street which is located approximately halfway between the historic city ​​centre and Královo Pole. I started to go to school there.
In autumn 1963 we finally moved to Prague, to Vokovice. My father worked as a dermatologist at the Central Military Hospital in Střešovice.

My mother Alena, née Vavruchová, daughter of Zdeněk and Eliška, went to the Girls Elementary School on the right river bank behind the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design. I suspect that it is Křižovnická Street.
She graduated from the grammar school in 1943 and was immediately enrolled in forced labor (so-called Totaleinsatz). She worked until the end of the war as a worker in the armory in Karlín, it was a branch of the Messerschmidt factory.

After the war she studied biochemistry at Charles University.
She then took her first job as a laboratory assistant in a penicilin factory in Roztoky near Prague and after about two years in yeast research in the brewery in Braník.