My father helped to create Czechoslovak borders, communists then used them to separate our family
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Anděla Kostlivá, née Roubíková was born on 18 September 1920 in Prague. She grew up with her parents in Bubeneč and the family then moved to Podolí in 1926. Her father Václav Roubík, who was a clerk at a royal court during the times of Austria-Hungary, was after the origin of Czechoslovakia in charge of creating a governmental Public Affairs authority and he became its minister in 1926 which was during the second government of Jan Černý. Before that, he got married to Anděla Hošťálová and they had three children during a short period of time. Anděla had a nice childhood, she studied First Town Young Women Grammar School of Eliška Krásnohorská and she passed the final leaving exam in 1938. She got married to Karel Kostlivý in May 1940 and they had three children together. The family was tragically affected by the communist regime. Her older brother Václav Roubík emigrated in 1940, her younger brother Antonín Roubík was due to alleged membership in an anti-state organization sentenced to serve 16 years for high treason in a political court case called Rachač et al. Regime made sure that the whole family faced consequences: the loss of her husband´s job, problems with finding a new one including problems with finding schools for children. Antonín Roubík emigrated shortly after the occupation in August 1968. Anděla Kostlivá was living in Prague in 2018 and she was already a widow at that time.
