On this day, 102 years ago, my grandmother, Olga Woronoff, began a diary which documents their last months in Russia and their movements during the Civil War. My grandfather, Paul Woronoff, was fighting with the White Army (the Volunteer Army) and my grandmother had travelled to the south of Russia
Researching family history, for me, is more than drawing connecting lines on a family tree. I always want to know more about my ancestor’s stories, how they lived their lives, what their thoughts were. Often this information can be gleaned from the letters they wrote or the memories they jotted
The geographical history of Europe often blows my mind. Areas, regions and even entire countries are seemingly juggled between various governments, with borders being drawn and redrawn at will. Both sides of my family have been impacted by the geographical history of the land which is now known as Latvia.
During and after World War II, both of my father’s sisters were nurses. My Aunt Sigrid, the eldest, six years older than my father, began training as a nurse at the age of 18, in 1931, – the minimum age at the time. At the time my father’s family were
Friedrich-Georg Otto Heinrich von Fircks; fourth child and eldest son of Peter Julius Otto von Fircks. Known to his family as Frigo, he was by all accounts a sweet boy and a charming young man. My aunt, the eldest of the children, described Frigo as always happy, always cooperative and
On 28 June 1914, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. It was an incident which was to set a chain of events in motion, culminating in World War I. Not quite a month after the assassination, around 20-23 July 1914, the French President, Raymond Poincaré, made an