My great grand-mother, Paula,
my grandmother Sidonie,
and also
my aunt, my mother"s youngest sister,
and her daughter, 2 y older then me,
So different in dress and appearance!
but not so different perhaps in character.
also Susanna, my oldest cousin was softer, then perhaps her elder, and definitely then me, probably just born at the time.
Paula was a very warm, optimist, but very strong woman.
Widowed early with 7 children, the eldest, my grand mother only 14 at the time, she took over a factory, distillery, and managed it in a time when few women did such things.
She was also the one that taught me, 11 years after this photo, that "something good comes from every coup that descends on us".
Sidonie, very brave, very quiet, very cultured too, who had the courage to write a journal through her and her family's ordeal in the German camp of Bergen Belsen, wrote from the moment they were taken from home throughout and even, after.
I translated it in French and English, also it had cost me, as it is not easy read, but it has sunny and even funny moments in it too. Sidonia also welcomed and helped me when I emigrated from Romania and was waiting a baby. Me, and later, my husband too.
My aunt did not have an easy life, but under the appearance of fragility, she was of steal and forged out a life for herself and her two children. Her first husband died as they were yet young and she did not remarry until late. But even when 90, she still found a friend, she could be so fragile, attractive and intelligent too.
Courageous women, life did not deal easy for them, but they did the best they could with it.
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