You can't know where you're going...

...until you know where you've come from. I'm a big fan of that saying, hence my utter glee at mum arriving for her visit armed with a stash of old photographs covering roughly a century of our family history.

Just have a look at this first one. That's my grandma on the left with my mum and her brother, Ton. Isn't it fantastic? It was taken in roughly 1942 in Rotterdam outside the house my mum grew up in. In 1944 my grandfather was taken prisoner by the Nazis and for over a year the family waited in that house for him without a word of his whereabouts. He finally showed up in Rotterdam a few weeks after the Russians overran Germany and liberated him from a shipyard in Dresden. He walked most of the way home.

And then look at these guys! This was taken - so far as I can tell - around 1930. They're my mother's uncles on her mother's side...all eight of them! Man, they knew how to dress in those days...  OK, one more, just for fun. I honestly haven't figured out the family connection in this one yet, but it's school photo taken in Rotterdam in 1929 and it says one the people in it is Mrs R Sinoo. That should mean that's my grandmother in the middle at the back. She would have been 25 then...

There you have it folks. Take photographs. Keep them somewhere safe.

Comments

[Kris in Hawaii]

I love old family photos! These are great ones.

[Kris in Hawaii]

I love old family photos! These are great ones.