Family History

This week my aunt Sabine visited me for a few days. She is 84 now and not willing to travel much - she has never been a fan of airplanes. I suspect this is her last trip to Canada and last visit to my house.

While she was staying with me I took the time to interview her about her life. This is something I did bit with my mother as she was trying to write her life story, I thought I had more time with her but was caught out a couple of years ago when she suddenly died. I want to avoid missing some of the story wuth Tante Sabine and feel an urgency to interview her about her life.

Over the next few months I am going to post her story, and what I know of parents story, online.

Sabine lives these days in commuter village near Frankfurt called Sulzbach am Taunus. She has been in the same apartment now since 1975, a consistency she did nit have for many decades of her life.

Sabine von Schulmann was born in September of 1926 on the remnants of the family estate Limmat in Estonia. Her life was in most ways un remarkable till age 18. She experienced the same sort of things that most Baltic German youth of the era went through. Her life changed dramatically from most others in early 1945 when the family started an die Flucht.

With her parents, August and Beate von Schulmann, and her gradmother, the family fled the on coming Soviet troops but were ultimately captured by the Soviets. It this story of her 12 years in the Soviet Union and her return to west that make for a unique and remarkable story and one I want to tell to the world.