She said her name was Tasia. And her last name was always a cause for family debates, because it irritated her no end that no one in our family could pronounce it properly. To our Filipino ears, it sounded like Kazzuhina, so that is how we said it and spelled it, much to her chagrin. It didn’t help that she would write it down in Cyrillic, the alphabet she grew up with, which added more to the confusion.
She told us this much: that she was 18 when she arrived in the Philippines after spending months on a ship from Russia, escaping the Bolshevik Revolution when it escalated in 1918. Handed over to the ship captain by family members for safekeeping, she was locked in her cabin for her safety, isolated from all other Russian passengers fleeing the revolution.
She did not join the rest of the White Russian émigrés (anti-communist, monarchist Russians who emigrated from Russia in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution) who got off in China and Japan.
The only passenger left, she alone disembarked in a Philippine port, assisted by the protective ship captain, without any identification papers or documents.
Brought to a monastery or orphanage somewhere in Manila, she was looked after by nuns for some time until she was turned over to a wealthy spinster who played matchmaker to her and my future grandfather, Lope Pelayo.
-from
Filipino’s grandmama could be Russia’s AnastasiaBy Emily A. Abrera
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Sunday, May 13th, 2012
more at:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/192351/filipinos-grandmamma-could-be-russias-anastasia Linkback:
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