Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Start of a story.

Goodmorning everybody.

I will not talk about much, in fact there isn;t much for the moment, LOL, but still I will take a little bt of your time, by telling a bit of the family history. I will give you probably each day a little part, but I think it will be interesting to read.
And I have, of course, a freebie for you at the end of the post. I must give credit to Zaza from http://blogchezzaza.vefblog.net/, because out of her tubes I made kind of overlays for the papers. You should take a look at her blog, she offers an awesome amount of freebies and beautiful they are.!
I called the kit "Felicita", because all those bright papers and flowers make you just feel happy!
Have a nice read, great day and enjoy the freebie!

FAMILY HISTORY PART 1

As you know, my mother was Russian. She was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1916. In that time Finland was a part of Russia. Her parents belonged to the Russian nobility, yes, in fact my mother was a countess. My grandfather was an officer in the Tsar's army and was at that time detached to the fortress of Sveaborg. Well, all was well until there came the big revolution in Russia. This reached Finland a bit later, but suddenly all was dangerous and the family had to flee. If they shouldn;t have done that they probably have been killed. My grandparents and family witnessed some aweful things during that turbulant time. I still remember the story about a little baby. A few days before they could flee, my grandparents had some visitors, among them an officer and his wife and their baby of a few months. Suddenly the appartment was invaded by soldiers(turned to the "Reds", the communists), and were all searched for weapons. One of the men asked the officer if he still had some weapon, because he didn't trust them. To get his answer he took the baby on the table and searched the dipers. And found a pistol! And in front of all he just shot the baby through the head with the found pistol! And this was just one of the things they witnessed.
Still there were some soldiers and officers, who liked the family and helped them to escape. They were fortunate, but it all had to be done hush, hush and in a hurry and there was no more time to secure some money on a foreign bank. All borders were already closed. And they were not poor people! So the soldiers turned against the Tsar, but still helped my grandfather and family to flee, but it wasn't possible to do this together. My grandmother and the two children had to go by boat to England and my grandfather via Germany. They only could take just some spare money, a family icon, two or three rings and their personal documents with them. Just before separated my grandparents promised eachother to meet again in Paris, where many Russian emmigrants went to. Although it wan;t easy, at last my grandmother arrived after weeks in Paris. Each day she went to the cityhall, to see if there was any news about my grandfather. It took months before she heard, my grandfather had an accident in Germany, in a steelfactory where he went to work for a little while to have some money for the voyage. But a steel bar had fallen on his legs and they were both broken, so it would take some time before he could travel again. Still he was lucky, because the legs healed well. And there my grandmother was in Paris, with practically no money at all, no husband, a tiny appartment to pay and two children to raise!! What to do? First she sold the few rings she had, but that money was in no way enough. She had never worked in her life, but was a very artistic and intelligent women, who spoke several foreign languages, so she just had to figure out something. For example she could paint and sew well. She went to the Opera of Paris to see if they needed anyone to make the ballet and opera costumes.And with a lot of begging she finally got the job. That already was a little relief. Now she could pay for the school for the children( at that time son Victor and daughter Kyra, later they had another daughter Sascha), because she wanted them to have a good education. And although the money she earned wasn't much, she managed to have some food on the table and send the kids to school.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good morning Kyra !

Just whant to say that everything is ok with your kit and it's very beautiful.

Cant wait to read the following of your story even if I do not understand everything because I'm French (I'm helping me a little with Google translator but it is not perfect ... lol)

Big kiss to you from Montreal (Canada) !

ZaZa