I now did my grandfather 'pop' George Harrison's time travel and avatars, always a joy for me. And other ancestors, I shall gradually do likewise. How wonderful is this technology. My pop was from the Welsh hills bordering onto England and he lived for 100 years.
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In Montpellier, staying with my friend Francois, I got stuck into his genealogy, into his maternal lineage, he having had a Russian Bessarabian Jewish grandmother Anna Roitman, originally Shperberg. Her husband Felix alias Ephim Roitman was gassed in Auschwitz by the Nazi's. He was a lovely man, an artist, and Francois had some decorative paintings of his, flowers upon trays and on a lampstand. Felix's wife, Anna, and daughter Lucile escaped but 15 minutes before the Nazi's would have taken them away, warned by the concierge of their building, for which they took flight to free France, far from Paris. They took refuge in a monastery and there converted to Christianity. Anna's conversion was simply for survival, she and Felix having been athiests, whereas Lucile (Francois's mother) took the Christian experience deeply into her heart. In Bessarabia, modern Moldova, the family came from Kishinev where they were petit bourgeois. It took a while of detective work and some stamina, to then discover much upon the Shperberg line. Annas's parents had run a paint shop. Her father Bentsion appears to also have been a victim of the holocaust. His own father, Shimon, son of Avram, died in his 50's of a lung infection. A couple of days later I worked even more on Francois's genealogy. Up till now I'd looked only at his Bessarabian side, which did fascinate. Now I got to look at his French side, for which we visited his elderly father Pierre Joly who produced a whole grand tree of his ancestry which was from Burgundy, German Switzerland and the Jura. Besides I was able to inspire Pierre to talk of family stories. As a boy, Pierre had been so close to his Swiss granny Julia Joly née Kuhn, who eventually would die from asthma. She had previously worked as head chef for the nobility and one day there had arrived a handsome hussar, who on delivering a package of money to the countess was rewarded by being sent to the kitchen for a meal. It was on setting eyes upon this good looking man, Charles Felix Joly, that Julia fell in love. As she would later say 'The devil tempted me into loving this man'. Having taken her to her room and become pregnant they would marry and this she would regret, for she was from a good Swiss family and he was a poor 'good for nothing'. There was no work for him at his home in Burgundy, so Julia brought him to Switzerland so her family could find him work, only for his mother, Marie Claudine, to get furious and make such a fuss that they returned to France. He was her only son. His father had died when he was but 11 years of age. Even Pierre would say of his Hussar grandfather Charles Felix Joly, he was 'not a pleasant man and wasn't often at home.' Whereas Pierre loved his Swiss granny and even lived with her for some years when he was a small boy. Pierre's father Arthur Jean Auguste Joly was a miller, mechanic and mender of bikes. He was hard working and wasn't at home much either. He died from a heart attack, while in recovery from an appendicitis operation. Pierre's mother Aimée née Lamy was a discreet woman, always exhausted with her six children who she announced would bring her to her death for all their noise and naughtiness, and yet she would live a long life, as would Hussar Charles Felix Joly. Aimée's maiden name, Lamy, was as common a surname in the Jura as Smith was in England. Aimée's mother Leonie, Pierre would never know as she died before he was born, aged 55, from breast cancer. Louis 'Old man' Lamy, Aimée's father, was stately and pompous, with a little moustache. He had a machine factory, where Arthur Joly worked from the age of 12, and on there meeting Louis's daughter, Aimée, he'd fallen in love. When they wanted to marry, Louis said he would never accept his daughter marrying a worker, so they had to wait till they were of age, marrying against his will, for which Old Man Lamy was forbidden to come to their house (though he would when his son in law was at work and besides, Pierre often met him when returning from school and would sit on his knees chatting with him and liked him a lot). So there was the tale of a French Swiss family. Pierre himself was good looking and a ladies man. He met Lucile Roitman when they were both students at the Sorbonne. He was a village boy and she was a sophisticated Parisian and an adept organiser, for which he admired her. They were both religiously active in converting people to catholicism, both devout, although in later life Pierre became an athiest. Despite her Jewish origins, from a young age Lucille had loved Christianity, which she always remained true to. I'd heard the story from Francois and now heard of this from Pierre, that the parish vicar who had been hiding Lucille and her mother Anna from the Nazi's, whom Anna had worked for as his servant, converted Lucile when she was aged 11. I emotionally connect with the ancestors I research, and felt it deeply, the loss of their beloved kind Felix to the Nazi holocaust. When the concierge had warned Anna that Jews in the area were being rounded up, thus enabling their escape, Felix was in hospital getting a check up for a minor ailment and he was taken prisoner from there. All these French Jews were put in a camp near Paris called Drancy, whole families with their children being crowded in there and some famous Jews. Anna would send parcels of provisions for him. Even she'd recieve his dirty laundry, wash it and send it back clean. Felix occupied himself while there in doing portraits. There was ever hope in those days, illustrated in their letters to one another, which Francois showed me later; a hope that the war situation would reverse and they would be reunited. Their photographs I got to see, visions of a lovely family. But under SS Nazi dominion, they suddenely having taken over command of Drancy, wagons of inmates began to be sent far away to Auchwitz, most of the occupants to be gassed immediately on arrival. It breaks ones heart to read of this and that Felix was one of those sent to Auchwitz himself. He was part of convoy number 32, journeying in a convoy of 1,000 Jews to Auschwitz on September 14th 1942, 893 of them who were gassed at the end of their journey, dear Felix being one of them. Anna was a single mother now, considered to be a Christian. She would be quite well off ultimately, being compensated by the Germans for them having killed her husband. It was Francois who cleared Anna's Montpellier apartment when she died, selling her furniture and paintings. He never found any documents of hers or Felix's Bessarabian origins. As a genealogist this to me is tragic, the loss of such papers. Like, in regard to Felix, I can find nothing of his own Roitman ancestry, there being no birth record, or of his marriage to Anna, nothing; a complete standstill.
![]() I have discovered a new record, a register from 1939 for all English and Welsh households, compiled to gain information for future war purposes, for the likes of giving out war passes, and later, ration books. Some names are for now blacked out, so not everyone can be found. Using this register I have found my father as a baby in the Welsh mountains with his mother, my nanny Eileen, being with her husband Pop's family, minus Pop himself who was back in Dovercourt with Eileen's family. A kind of swapping of family situations was going on there. I do remember my nanny Eileen saying she'd had to be sent to the healthy air of the Welsh mountains due to a tuberculosis shadow having shown up in her lungs. It was fun updating all the relatives and ancestors with new information from the 1939 register. The 1921 census was destroyed by fire and a 1941 census hadn't even been taken, so the register fills in a much needed gap. Not that any census's beyond 2011 are permitted to be looked at as yet anyway. Through this register I have learnt that the ship our Percy Spencer was a chef on was called the Malinas, making trips regularly between Harwich and Antwerp, and the ships bombing during the war, which had put him off working on the sea evermore, was when the navy had adopted it as a convoy escort vessel and Germans had torpedoed it near Port Said in Egypt. So that's where our Percy had got to then. As for my Pop, George Harrison, he is written of as having been part of the personnel at HMS Ganges across the river at Shotley Gate, there where he had remained till it had closed down in 1976, after many years of travelling to and from work on a ferry boat across the estuary. The HMS Ganges with its Indian prince figurehead was a naval training facility and Pop was part of the maintenance team. The Trog was the name of the boat especially laid on for the HMS Ganges workers. Using the 1939 register I am now working on updating all my accumulated friends genealogies. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() Brian was off to Stanstead to meet his brother John, with my family research to be presented, to be much appreciated. I interviewed my mum again, this time on her childhood memories. Her first memory was of seeing her mother cuddling and kissing a man on the landing. 'Who's that man, mummy?' she asked. 'This is your father' was the reply. My mum hadn't known him because of his war service, but now he was home on a pass to be with his family for Xmas, the time of which my uncle John was conceived. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. My godfather Chris, my mums cousin, sent me photocopies of the wartime passes of my great grandparents, D'Auvergne and Mary Ann Bane. Both blue eyed, he fair haired, she a brunette. And photos of them are on there, wow. A photo of Mary, other than as an old lady. I can see that her son, my great uncle Dick, takes after her in his looks. As the photos were unclear I wrote to Chris asking if it was possible to get clearer ones. Its so good to receive something like this. I was genealogised out though by the end of the day. I need a break from it. My mother is keen to get those wartime passes off Chris to donate to the Harwich Historical Society. On the passes, it had mentioned that four of Mary Ann's brothers were fighting in the war. I sent both mum and Chris information of how one of them had died, Ernest Seagrove, on the continent from war wounds while in action. Trying to find anymore on him or his family, I indeed found information that quite surprised me. Well, firstly I saw that two of the other brothers, Philip and John, having survived the first world war, perished during the second world war, along with Susan, the wife of James, another of the brothers, all on the same day in their homes in Greenwich, being next door neighbours, bombed by the Germans, wartime civilian deaths. And not only did I find this out, I was shocked to discover that Mary's mother, Maria, had in the year of 1900 been destitute, so that she and her children had to resort a few times to the workhouse, with no sign of Thomas whose duty it was to support them and keep them alive. A note was there, in one of the workhouse entries, for young Ernest, saying that his mother was in prison. Oh, what a shock it was to see that. If indeed it was true it could not have been for long, because the next time the children were recorded as being in the workhouse, due to apparently having been home alone with no parents around, Maria turned up but an hour later to take them back home with her. This is all very curious. Like, what was Thomas up to in abandoning them for a year, and how desperate Maria must have been to not only keep going to the workhouse, but also to get on the wrong side of the law. There is quite a story there, if only one could know more. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Pop talked to me about having been in Italy during the second world war. I'd heard this before but liked to listen in case something new came to light. As a Royal Naval commando in the war Pop had one of the most dangerous and important tasks of any, as he and his fellows were the first onto the invasion beaches and the last to leave. That work on the beaches was crucial to the success of the allied invasions. Pop was also for a while in Scalpa Flow in the Orkneys which was so boring that a couple of the men cracked up. They had to compress snow to make water. Pop said it took an enormous amount of snow just to make a little water. I watched some of an interesting Italian film 'Paisa', about Naples towards the end of the war, to get an insight into how the situation may have been when my pop was there. I visited Naples for a month too, taking my baby Jai to see his father who was working out there teaching English. I looked up historical references by early travellers regarding Naples and those environs. Pizza had been referred to as a 'horrible condiment' and the city had some 30,000 'registered sinners' of which travellers could 'purchase their repentance at a dear rate' ie. contracting syphillis from the prostitutes. 'The women are generally well featured but excessively libidinous'. The Grand Tour had esteemed Naples as a city worth seeing and by 1817 there were 400 English famillies residing in Naples, after which its reputation dwindled to scorn. Nelson called Naples a 'country of fiddlers and poets, whores and scoundrels'. Charles Dickens noted its 'miserable depravity, degradation and wrtechedness'. Ruskin called it the 'most disgusting place in Europe' and the 'most loathsome nest of human caterpillars I was ever forced to stay in'. My parents now decided to take Pop on a trip to Naples so he may relive some of his memories. Pop was so very excited to be going to Italy. He reminisced to me about Pozzuoli and of how he had witnesses the last eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It was at Pozzuoli that Pop had lodged with an Italian family who had a lovely daughter, these times being of his fondest memories.
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