AZERBAIJAN: Yvonne Botto, an 83-year-old resident of Azerbaijan returns to her native France for the first time since 1947

Record ID: 218067

  • Title: AZERBAIJAN: Yvonne Botto, an 83-year-old resident of Azerbaijan returns to her native France for the first time since 1947
  • Date: 13th October 2011
  • Summary: ISMISHLI REGION, AZERBAIJAN (RECENT) (REUTERS) YVONNE BOTTO SITTING WITH HER SON AT TABLE OUTSIDE BOTTO'S FACE
  • Embargoed: 28th October 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan
  • Country: Azerbaijan
  • Topics: General,People
  • Reuters ID: LVAD4NGLOUQOEPX7TYNNG50BDBP3
  • Story Text: An 83-year-old resident of Azerbaijan who left her native France during the Second World War, Yvonne Botto, returned to her home country on Wednesday (October 12,2011).
    Botto moved to the Azerbaijan after meeting her Azeri husband - a Soviet soldier who escaped his stationing in Italy and joined the resistance in France - during WWII.
    The journey to Azerbaijan, which was to become her home for the majority of her lifetime, was a long and hard one, Botto recalled.
    "We were travelling for three months, as the Germans had destroyed all the roads. Ten days from here, five days there, two days there - we were in a very difficult situation. We sold our clothes to buy food," she told Reuters.
    The wedded couple travelled to Baku and onwards to the Imishli Region before settling in the Murguzalli villiage, which is still her home.
    Botto, now a mother of seven and grandmother of 30 recalled the moment when she arrived at the in Imishli Region in Azerbaijan.
    "When they announced (our arrival to) Imishli it was as if all Azeries went crazy, arriving to their motherland. A crowd met us at the platform, and all of them were kissing (each other)," she said.
    Botto said that her father was an influential man in the French city of Lyon at the time when she met her husband to be, and had close ties to the Resistance, but he only consented to her marriage two years after the end of the war.
    "They - the Azeris - were working at the factory. They came to our place and proposed marriage. My father organised our wedding and helped us. He bought him (her husband) clothes, as he had no means," she said of her marriage.
    After her marriage, Botto converted to her husband's religion - Islam and changed her name to Amina at the request of her husband's relatives.
    Following the death of her first husband, Shammad Shirmammadov, Botto remarried one of his relatives - a tradition for Azerbaijani widows.
    Botto stayed in touch with her French family and her mother tired to take her back to her home county and came to see her in Baku. Yet the authorities prevented Botto's child - a Soviet citizen - from leaving the country.
    Although her trip to France on Wednesday (October 12, 2011) is her first since she left in the 1940's, she plans to return to Azerbaijan within a month.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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