Memorias de un Refugiado · Chapter 1 · April 16, 2026

Chapter 1:
Memories of My Childhood

Václav Nový · translated from the Spanish original by Jaroslav Sokol · 6 min read

My Life in Europe, Chapter 1: Memories of My Childhood

My earliest memories go back to 1935 or 1936. At that time we lived in a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. My father had various duties there. One of them was looking after the cinema the sanatorium kept for its patients. He also maintained the heating plant and occasionally drove a truck that belonged to the same institution. In those days we had a car with two seats in front and a covered rear section. You lifted a lid and underneath appeared another little seat, for a child. The lid served as a backrest, upholstered all over in brown leather. This was my place, and they strapped me into it whenever we went out for a drive. I remember this perfectly.

I remember the patients, who were fed large quantities of sausage and rich food. Back then there was no known treatment for tuberculosis, Koch's bacillus had not yet been discovered, and it was believed the patient had to be very well nourished. On days of hard frost they carried the sick outside, lying down and very well wrapped up, with only their eyes and mouths exposed. It was done so they would breathe the icy air, in the belief that this would burn the bacilli in their lungs.

Once my father had the truck running and I was with him. I don't know why, but he went back into the house to fetch something and left me inside. The curiosity of that age made me pull at the levers the truck had. Imagine my surprise and horror when it started to roll. Hearing my desperate screaming, my father ran out of the house, jumped into the truck and stopped it. To this day I remember the hiding I got on that occasion.

I don't have many memories from that time, but you have to bear in mind that some seventy years have passed since then.

The Golden Harp

A little later my father went to work at the telephone exchange in Mariánské Lázně, and we followed him there. Around that time my mother bought a house in that spa town and christened it the Golden Harp.

It was the custom then to give buildings and houses names. In Spanish it would translate as Arpa de Oro. It was a fairly large building and we occupied the second floor. There were two flats on each floor. There was plenty of room; they even gave me a small room that had evidently belonged to a maid. There I was the master, though my mother did the cleaning. I had a guitar and a mandolin and was forever trying to play something, without much result. It was around then that I began studying the violin.

The town was very beautiful, though I would have preferred a place with a river or a lake. The whole town was surrounded by a sea of forest. It lay in a valley with many parks and trees on every side. The buildings are all very handsome and richly ornamented, and there are carefully tended flowers everywhere. It is an international spa, with springs of fifty-two different waters, and various kinds of mud for different treatments. Great care is taken over the image of a clean, quiet town, to the point that funerals were held exclusively at night. I never saw one.

Winter and the ski run behind the house

In winter life changed a great deal; everything was covered in snow, sometimes two metres deep. The forest looked fantastic and altogether everything was beautiful thanks to the great whiteness and cleanness of the snow. I was a great enthusiast for skiing, and a race course ran right beside my house. So I had my training ground close by. It began a little higher up in the forest, and a large part of the race ran between the many pines, which made it very exciting. Lower down there was a jump from which you flew some three metres above the road, which was more fun still. From there you came down the slope beside my house to the finish a little below. This was my favourite sport and I spent all my free time on the ski run.

At the age of six I won a medal in a race on flat terrain. It takes a great effort, because there are no slopes on those courses. It was a very significant experience, because winning first place is very exciting but also utterly exhausting. Winter was the season I looked forward to most, and I enjoyed it enormously.