Everything tagged: Russia

Michael Martin writes:

Leo Borisoff was a White Russian Policeman in HK and in Stanley Camp and he was friends with my grandfather and his cousin Vitaly 'Vic' Veriga.

The first mention I see for him is in the 1933 Jurors List, where he is working as a Steward at the H.K. & Shanghai Hotels, Ld. By the 1941 List, he's still with the same company but promoted to Maitre d'Hotel.

John Black's copy of the CWGC list of internees at Stanley has a typo in the surname: "V I Olafinsky". It gives his occupation in 1941 as "Ast Hotel Manager", and DoB as 1905.

The information comes from Nona's website, which has lots more information about her aunt Jenny.

Boris Milenko was born in central Russia during the Russian Revolution - the civil war which followed resulted in the Milenko family, along with many other White Russians who opposed the Red Russian communists, relocating to Harbin, Manchuria in 1920. Boris' father (Yuri Lukich Milenko) was a lawyer in St Petersburg prior to the Revolution, and continued to practice as a solicitor in Harbin from 1920 until the late 1940s.

Nikki Veriga asks:

does anyone have any information/knowledge about Alexander (Alex) Kriloff who, I believe, was involved with BAAG?  He was also known as Alex Kennedy. He was my uncle - brother-in- law of Vitaly (Vic) Veriga.

Georges Joseph Hofer was living in Shanghai with Swiss nationality at the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in the summer of 1937. Later that year he was evacuated with his wife and a number of fellow nationals to Hong Kong, where he claims to have worked as a masseur. 'Claims' is the operative word: Hofer was an elaborate and skilled fantasist (who might have been born eight years later than the 'official' date given).

Nona Pio-Ulski writes:

Anna Akimovna Nozadze was my grandmother, a White Russian who fled Russia with her husband and daughters during the Revolution and ended up in Shanghai.

After Hong Kong was liberated, my parents organised for her to come to Hong Kong togther with her daughter Evgeniya.

When I first started speaking I couldn't say Baba Anya, which is Russian for 'Grandmother Anya', and called her Balia, and this name stuck with her for the rest of her life.

Note from Dave Deptford:

G F Robinson, Sgt E 24  B 20,04 1908, enlisted 27.5.1930, employed with Anti-Piracy Contingent and regraded to Sub Inspector post war, awarded Colonial Police Long Service & Good Conduct Medal 1948, retired shortly thereafter. Regret I don't have his Russian name.

Mr Petro was a White Russian who had taken French Nationality. His wife, Barbara, was a friend of American writer Emily Hahn.

He was a supporter of the Free French. He joined the Volunteers on the penultimate day of the December 1941 hostilities, and was wounded in the leg. Later he escaped Hong  Kong via Macau.

Source:

Emily Hahn, China to Me, 1987 ed., 257, 293, 368

Serge Peacock was a baker at Lane, Crawford's Stubbs Road Bakery in the period leading up to WW11. His father also worked there.

At some point before the war he took British nationality by naturalization and anglicised his name.

He baked bread during the hostilities, and after the surrender he was held in the Exchange Building and the French Hospital with the other bakers. He was sent to Stanley Camp on May 7, 1943, where he spent the rest of the war.

He is probably to be seen in the Edgar weddding photo of June 29, 1942: