Sofka Skipwith facts for kids
Sofka Skipwith (born Sophia Dolgorukova; 23 October 1907 – 26 February 1994) was a Russian princess who became a hero during World War II. After working for famous actor Laurence Olivier, she was held in a camp by the Nazis in France. While there, she bravely worked to save Jewish people from the Holocaust, which was a terrible time when many Jews were killed.
Sofka was honored for her amazing efforts by both the British government and by Israel. In Israel, she was named one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, a special title for non-Jewish people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
Contents
Sofka Skipwith: A Heroic Life
Early Life and Family
A Royal Childhood
Sofka Skipwith was the only child of Prince Peter Dolgorouky and Countess Sophy Bobrinskaya. Her parents got married in 1907 in a grand ceremony that even the Russian royal family attended. Sofka's granddaughter later wrote that it was considered the most splendid wedding of that year.
Sofka came from a very old and important Russian family. On her father's side, she was related to Rurik, a famous prince from long ago. Her grandfather, "Sandik," held a high position in the Imperial Court.
Her Amazing Mother
Sofka's mother, Sophy, was an extraordinary woman. She was related to Catherine the Great, a powerful Russian empress. Sophy studied medicine and became a respected surgeon. She also learned to fly airplanes in 1913, becoming one of the first female bomber pilots! In 1912, she was the only woman to take part in a car rally from St. Petersburg to Kiev. She even wrote funny poems under a secret name.
When the Russian Revolution happened, Sofka's mother bravely went back into Russia to help her second husband get out of prison. Later, she drove a taxi in Paris to support him. Sofka's parents divorced when she was four, and she mostly grew up with her grandmother and an English teacher.
When the Revolution began, Sofka and her grandmother went to the Crimea. They were with the Dowager Empress Marie, the former empress. In 1919, they were evacuated to England with many other noble families. Sofka grew up living in many different cities like Bath, London, Rome, Budapest, Nice, Paris, and Dieppe.
She enjoyed school at Queen's College in London and became good friends with Margaret Douglas-Hamilton. They even studied together with a governess, though they sometimes made it difficult for her! In Nice, she studied at the Lycée, but she preferred reading books in Rome, where she had her first love.
Working Life and Adventures
Becoming a Secretary
Sofka's mother suggested she learn to be a secretary. So, Sofka trained in French and English shorthand and typing. At 21, she became the secretary for the Duchess of Hamilton. This job involved speaking at events for animal welfare and helping organize a big wedding for the Duchess's daughter, Margaret. Sofka even helped save a dinner party when unexpected guests arrived! During this time, she also managed to get a British passport.
In 1931, Sofka married Leo Zinovieff, who was also a Russian aristocrat. He was an engineer. For a while, Sofka worked only sometimes, translated her mother's book, and went to parties. But then the Great Depression hit, and her husband lost his job. Sofka couldn't work much because she was pregnant. They managed by renting out part of their house and doing small jobs like typing.
Life with Laurence Olivier
After her first son, Peter, was born, Sofka started working for a temporary job agency. She also taught Russian. Through the agency, she began working for the famous actor Laurence Olivier and his wife Jill Esmond. Soon, she was working for them five days a week.
Sofka and her first husband separated kindly. After her second son was born, they divorced. Later, after the Oliviers also separated, Sofka married Grey Skipwith. He was an heir to a noble title. They lived for a while in the Oliviers' house in London. Olivier even gave them a huge bed as a wedding gift!
For their children's sake, they moved to a cottage outside London. After their third son was born in 1938, they planned to move to Paris to focus on translating books. They spent the summer traveling with a group of Cossacks, camping along the way. But then World War II started, making it impossible to move to Paris.
World War II Heroism
Trapped in Paris
When the war began, Sofka's husband joined the military. Sofka worried about her mother in Paris. She managed to get a visa and went to Paris to help her mother. However, on her second trip in May 1940, she got stuck in Paris when the Germans took over the city. Just before she was supposed to be secretly taken out of the country, she was rounded up with other British citizens. She was sent to an internment camp in Besançon.
In May 1941, Sofka and others were moved to a different camp in Vittel, which was set up in fancy hotels. She and her friends were upset when they later saw a movie that made the camp look much nicer than it was. In 1942, Sofka learned that her husband's plane had been shot down, and he had died.
Saving Lives in the Camp
While in the camp, Sofka repeatedly tried to help people escape. She smuggled messages and items from Red Cross parcels to the French Resistance, a group fighting against the Germans. Her most important work began when about 250 Polish Jews arrived at a separate part of the camp. These Jews had paid for fake South American citizenship papers, which turned out to be useless.
Sofka bravely wrote down the names of these Jewish people in tiny writing on cigarette papers. She sent many copies of this list through the French Communist Party to places like Geneva and Spain. In 1985, Sofka found out that because of her list, over 50 of the Vittel Jews were saved from being sent to Auschwitz, a terrible death camp. They were exchanged for Germans and sent to Palestine.
Sofka also helped an eleven-year-old girl escape to be hidden by a local family. She and a friend even smuggled a baby out under the camp fence in a basket! One woman pretended to be paralyzed with the help of the Jewish camp doctor, saving herself and her children. Sadly, most of the Jews from Vittel were killed after trying to rebel at the death camp. For many years, Sofka only knew that they had been taken to the gas chambers despite her efforts.
Sofka was sent back to England in August 1944. She had refused earlier chances to leave so she could keep trying to help the Polish Jews. On her long train journey to Lisbon, she and her friend were treated specially by the Gestapo, the German secret police. The Gestapo had misunderstood orders and thought they were important. They tried to recruit Sofka to make propaganda broadcasts, and she played along to get information.
When she returned, Laurence Olivier immediately hired her as a secretary for the Old Vic Theatre Company. After the war ended in Europe, she went on a tour with the company to entertain soldiers. During this tour, she saw the ruined city of Hamburg and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which was a very sad experience.
After the War
Helping Others Travel
In 1946, Sofka left the Old Vic to spend more time with her young son. She went back to working for the temporary job agency and spent a lot of time helping the Communist Party. She started a fun weekly dinner party called 'Sofka's Saturday Soups,' where she secretly used horsemeat because other meat was rationed. She later published a cookbook called Eat Russian.
In 1948, at 40, Sofka returned to Paris. She had a strong letter of recommendation from Laurence Olivier, who praised her as a "present help in time of trouble." She was hired to run Progressive Tours, a travel agency that aimed to help working people from Britain meet ordinary people in other countries. Sofka believed this was the best way to overcome prejudice and prevent another war. For several years, their tours to Eastern Europe were almost the only way for Westerners to visit those countries. In 1957, she was the first Western travel agent to enter Communist Albania.
Sofka's cousin, who had helped her leave occupied Paris, became very ill. He sold their cottage at a very low price and bought two unheated stables. Sofka left him and, as she later said, "lived in trains" during the late 1950s, staying with friends when not on tour.
Later Years
On one of her tours to the USSR, she met a man who was a trade unionist and a running coach. When Sofka moved back to London in late 1957, they moved into a house her youngest son bought for them. In 1962, they used his savings to buy a simple stone cottage in the middle of Bodmin Moor. They fixed it up, and Sofka wrote her memoirs. She stopped working for Progressive Tours in 1964.
Sofka and her partner preferred a quiet life in retirement. Sofka died of heart failure in February 1994. She had just appeared in a TV show about Rasputin, a famous Russian figure. Her partner died ten years later. Sofka's granddaughter said that Sofka always felt she was Russian first, joking that "All Russians are crazy!" She passed away in Cornwall, England.
Why She Was a Hero
Her Beliefs
Sofka Skipwith said she cared about economic inequality (when some people are very rich and others are very poor) since she was a child. In St. Petersburg, she heard that people were starving and secretly gave cakes to a servant to give to the poor. In the Crimea, she talked with the lodge-keeper's grandsons about raids on rich estates. Her "instinctive socialism" (a belief in fairness for everyone) grew stronger from reading political books in Rome.
When she worked for the Duchess of Hamilton, she helped with a political campaign in a poor area of Glasgow. She was shocked by how people lived there and was more impressed by the Labour Party politician who was already in office. After her first husband lost his job, she experienced poverty herself. This convinced her that the way society was divided into classes was unfair.
In 1933, after her first son was born, Sofka and her husband felt a nursing home was mistreating babies and not paying staff. Sofka worked there as a bookkeeper until she had enough information to report the owner, who was sent to prison. Sofka even hired one of the nurses who had nowhere else to go.
Sofka and her second husband tried to read books by Marx and Lenin but found them too hard. She finally joined the Communist Party while she was held in the internment camp, after many political discussions with her roommates. After returning to England, she joined the British Communist Party and was very active for many years, including her work for the travel agency. In the late 1960s, she edited the first issue of Albanian Life magazine and published a book about Albania. She also helped start a branch of the British-Soviet Society. She was one of four people who started a left-wing news paper called Front Page Review, but it stopped after two issues because they ran out of money. In 1949, she worked as an interpreter at the World Peace Congress and produced a journal called In Defence of Peace. As she got older, she became less involved with the party, but she still supported the Soviets and dreamed of returning to live in the USSR. In her last years, she was very focused on the Holocaust, often giving books about it to her friends.
Special Awards
In 1985, Sofka received a letter from Yad Vashem saying they were thinking of giving her an award as Righteous among the Nations. This was for her brave efforts to save Jewish people at the Vittel internment camp. She received the award after her death in 1998. In March 2010, she was also one of 27 people to receive a special United Kingdom honor called British Hero of the Holocaust. Most of these awards were given after the person had passed away.
Her Children
- Peter Zinovieff, 1933–2021
- Ian [Zinovieff] Fitzlyon, born 1935
- Sir Patrick Skipwith, 12th Baronet Skipwith, 1938–2016
