Archy ivota – Historie rodu Lw-Beer Low-Beer Daniel (2020)

This book tells the story of the improbable survival of a name and the people who bear it. Before 1938, Moravia and Brno were not only home to the wealthy Jewish industrial family of Lw-Beer, but also a place where its members could fully pursue business, cultural and social life. Czechoslovakia represented the height of European modernism, and they helped shape its direction. Then, in 1938, everything collapsed: they had to fight for their lives and lost everything. Those who managed to escape scattered across the world, going wherever they were allowed to enter; not one of them survived in Czechoslovakia. After the war, hope briefly emerged, but their property soon passed into the hands of the Communist regime, and the stories of its former owners were condemned to oblivion. Among the survivors, however, these stories continued to circulate, helping the family survive. In 2010, Daniel Low-Beer began visiting relatives literally all over the world and collecting fragments of what remained: stories of escape from the ghetto, life in the 1920s and 1930s, and flight from Czechoslovakia. The family history intersects with Villa Tugendhat and Schindlers List, offering a new perspective on the story of Oskar Schindler. Daniel Low-Beer is a physician working for the World Health Organization and lives in Geneva. He is a direct descendant of Arnold Lw-Beer, the last owner of an extensive textile complex in Brno and Brnnec. The book is in Czech.