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Kasperski Family History I have given a lot of thought to the best person to focus upon as a start for a Family History of my Polish ancestors and eventually I chose my great grandmother, Franciszka (Moneta) Kasperska. I made this choice because it should provide a focal point of understanding for her descendants, and my extended family relations in Poland, Canada, USA, Ukraine, France and Germany, all of whom have this remarkable woman as an ancestor, see Historical Overview. In her early life, Franciszka lived through the start of the great emigration wave from Galicia to Western Europe, North America, and South America. She had 2 daughters by her first husband (Tomasz Bruchal) and then another daughter and 2 sons by her second husband (Wawrzyniec Kasperski). She experienced the departure of a husband, a daughter, and a grandson as part of this emigration in 1912. She lived through the ravages of World War I, the political turmoil of 1919-1921, the departure of another son in 1927 (followed immediately by his wife and 3 more of her grandchildren in 1928), and then the Great Depression of the 1930s. If this was not enough, then came occupation by Soviet Russia in 1939 and incorporation into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, deportations of Poles in 1940 to the east, invading Germans in 1941, massed shootings of Jews at Buczacz and neighbouring villages in 1941 and 1942, forced labour deportations to Germany in 1943, Ukrainian-nationalist partisan attacks, and the return of the Soviet Army in 1944. It was a this juncture that she died in her 80th year, by hearsay accounts, in a retreating civilian column in the winter of 1944 near Kowalówka barely 20 kilometres from Trybuchowce, the village where she had lived her entire life. She would not live to experience one last great upheaval - the deportation in 1945 of all remaining Poles to the west. I hereby dedicate the Kasperski Family History and Genealogy section of my website to the memory of Franciszka Moneta (1864-1944). May all of her descendants live long and prosper! Lindy Marian Kasperski |