Alex is Polish. He was born in 1935 in a town called Troškūnai in Lithuania (as Poland and Lithuania were joined together for many years) where he lived until the age of 4.
In 1939, when Alex was 4, he was told that he had 30 minutes to pack his bag and leave as the Russian army were taking over the area and deporting any land owners to Siberia and taking ownership of all the land. The night before, his uncle had been captured by the Russians and was deported to Siberia where he spent 3 years in a labour camp before he died in 1942.
Alex remembers hiding under a birdge as the Russian soldiers went across the bridge and being told not to make a sound or else they too will be caught and sent to a Siberia camp.
Alex was an only child so he travelled with his mother and father across Europe over the next few years of hardship until they finally came to Dublin, Ireland. Alex's father used to own an estate in Lithuania with many workers and 17 businesses, but had to leave all this behind and when he finally got to Dublin, he did not speak English so had to work as a house servant.
The family of three had a number of hard years until Alex eventually started getting scholarships and was able to enter UCD, where he spent the rest of his years.
Alex was 4 when he left Lithuania so had very few memories, but after his death in 2013, we put together the following research on his (and our) family history.