It was only when I got to know my past that the circle closed
Stáhnout obrázek
Audrey Knoth was born in 1959 in Pennsylvania, United States. Her father Walter was a native American, and her mother Hedvika, née Robitscheková, was from Czechoslovakia, where she came with her parents during World War II. Walter worked as a chemist, Hedvika was a housewife. She didn‘t start working until both children - except Audrey, who was three years older than Bruce - had gone to university. The Knoths lived like a typical American family and did not remind themselves of their mother‘s Czech origin. Neither Hedvika Knoth nor her parents ever talked about their life in Czechoslovakia. Audrey Knoth learned about her family‘s past by chance only in 2022, when she discovered that her grandfather was Jewish and that most of his relatives from Pacov had perished in the Holocaust. With the help of researchers, she then charted her grandparents‘ dramatic escape from Europe in the face of the onset of Nazism. Audrey Knoth lives with her husband in Virginia, where she stayed after studying French and Spanish at the university there. After years of working in PR, she now works in Spanish radio. She has learned Czech and regularly travels to the Czech Republic to tell her family‘s story.
