irene Micol, born 1924

This engaging memoir of expatriate Russian life in Paris between the wars tells of the Catoire family, intermarried with the Rabeneck family. The memoir takes the life of Irène Catoire up to 1940 with Paris under occupation. Irène married a Frenchman Jacques Micol, living in Grenoble, where she taught Russian in a lycée for thirty years. She was great friends with Olga Rabeneck (the wife of Charles Rabeneck) and often visited London in the 1970s. Olga Rabeneck’s mother, Olga Pavloff, née Trapp, was the sister of Irène’s grandmother, Marie Pavloff. Olga Rabeneck was thus Irène’s great-aunt. This article was translated from the French by Andrew Rabeneck in 2022.

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