QCPS pupil learns of her Ukrainian refugee heritage

QCPS pupil learns of her Ukrainian refugee heritage

Saffron Gore, who has just completed

Reception at Queen’s College Preparatory School, was fascinated to learn that her great-grandmother and two great-greataunts — whose parents were refugees from Ukraine — all studied at Queen’s College (or ‘Big Queens’ as our Prep pupils call the College) in the 1920s and 1930s.

Saffron’s great-great-grandparents, Volodya and Marie Slavouski, were married in Kyiv in 1907 and lived in the city of Yekatarinoslav, now called Dnipro. In order to escape the threat of pogroms against the Jews, they managed to leave Ukraine shortly afterwards. Not much is known about their journey except that, for safety, Marie had to disguise herself as a boy. They headed first for Berlin, then to Paris and finally moved to London around the time of the start of the First World War in 1914. They had three daughters: Saffron’s great-grandmother, Victoria Slavouski (born in 1912) and her two sisters: Jacqueline Annette Slavouski (born in 1910, and known as Lucie) and Nora Beatrice Slavouski (born 1918). The Census of 1921 lists the family and gives Volodya’s occupation as ‘furrier’. Believers in the importance of girls receiving a proper education, Volodya and Marie sent all three of their daughters to study at Queen’s College, London on Harley Street.

Nora Slavouski, a pupil at Queen’s in the 1930s

“To escape the threat of pogroms against the Jews, they left Ukraine. Marie had to disguise herself as a boy.”

We’ve had a look in our College archives and have found references to the Slavouski sisters. Saffron’s greatgrandmother, Victoria, appears in our College Magazine in 1925 when her classmates express their sadness that she’d left Queen’s at the end of II Juniors. We also discovered several references to Saffron’s great-greataunt, Nora Slavouski. Nora is mentioned in the College magazine in 1931 as the pianist in the orchestra and was also listed on the netball team in July 1935. (Interestingly,

Saffron Gore, Nora’s great-great-niece, in her QCPS uniform in 2022

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