Family SECRETS
‘My story is like Saving Private Ryan’
Journalist Michelle Hather, 58, lives in south-west London with her husband Simon. She is originally from Liverpool and has three sons, Oscar, 29, Rorie, 27, and Louis, 25.
As mum to three young men, I look at the terrible suffering happening right now in Ukraine and I’m grateful that in western Europe we live in a time of relative peace. Can you imagine losing all your children to war? I certainly couldn’t – but I discovered that’s exactly what happened to my ancestors.
I grew up in Liverpool, but my mum’s great-grandparents – Heinrich and Clara – originally came from Germany in 1878. I’d seen the family tree researched by relatives, which showed several brothers dying during the war years, but as a young woman,
