This lovely picture is of my grandmother, Helena Łomnicka and my aunt, Alicja, taken after they were freed from Siberia and had recovered a little in Teheran before they were sent to the Lebanon in about 1944 or 5 Today is the 10th anniversary of my aunt’s death – I have written about her before […]Read Post ›
For KGK who has just been to Florence and it reminded me of my time there. In April 1976 I went to Florence for a fortnight with my mother’s husband, Zbyszek. The year before he had come out to Spain to visit me on my year abroad and had enjoyed himself so much that he […]Read Post ›
A chance photograph prompted this. I am sharing this post because I think it is so interesting: This past week Basia Korzeniowska posted a photo to the Kresy-Siberia Facebook Group, one which made me do a double-take. Why? Because I have the same photo in my collection. Basia mentioned her mo… Source: A serendipitous encounter…
My grandmother, Janina Wysoka, nee Kirschinger, in 1917 just before she got married. She was born in 1896 and died in 1978 just before I got married. Born in Bratislava; brought up in Vienna. Spent twenty years in Lwow, then Siberia and the long journey to freedom through Iran, Palestine and finally England in 1947. […]Read Post ›
This book was published very soon after the war. My father Jan Wysoki gave it to me to read when I was an adult because he said it gave the truest account in English of his own experiences. I am going to buy another copy now because I tore bits out of this one when […]Read Post ›
For IR There is no more powerful creature than a baby. Which adult has ever managed to say with absolute conviction, “I have changed people’s lives for the better”? Yet every baby does this in some sort of way. A few days ago I was at work, at school, unable to contain my excitement about […]Read Post ›
For AC My fourth grandmother, on the other hand, was the only one for whom I found difficulty in bringing any granddaughterly instincts to the fore. She was my stepfather’s mother, an aristocrat by birth, bearing and marriage, and the last ten years of her life exactly spanned the middle years of mine. She […]Read Post ›
Grandmothers For K, A, M … I was blessed with four. Which means I was twice as lucky as the average child and four times as fortunate as the average orphan. An advantage of four times seventy years against my erstwhile seven. Formidable calculations, guaranteed to put off the average innumerate reader. Be not […]Read Post ›
