I'd like to share with all of you the news on a great meeting I had last week. During my trip to Russia, I've planed to visit the former capital of the Russian Empire and I met our remote relative Natasha Schochenmaier from Saint-Petersburg.
As you know, according to her origin, she is much more closer to the American-Canadian Schochenmaiers than to ours. Let me explain how we are related.
Natasha's great great grandfather was Christian Schochenmaier (1866-1934), brother of Michael (1859-1937) and Jacob (1861-1923) who had left for the New World in 1880s. It seems to be that he was only 20 years old when his brothers emigrated, he stayed with his farther and got his farm.
As well as other Russianb Schochenmaiers, his son Heinrich Schochenmaier (1905-1975), grandfather of Natasha, fled to the West from the Soviet Army but he got stuck in Poland and was deported to the Soviet North, settlement of Syktyvkar, where was very cold and snowy. His son Harry Schochenmaier (1937-2018) as well as grandchildren Eugen (1963) and Natasha were born there.
It means that our branches of the Schochenmaiers hadn't seen each other since 1946 (because the ours had been deported either to the South of Ural or to Kazakhstan, so just opposite direction)!!! And now we met ! That was great! I am so thankful to Natasha for such a wonderful time we had together, Her son Nikita Schochenmaier (1995) joined us in order to find out more about our history and origin.
