Olga found living in a box car

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March 18, 1920

The American Red Cross issued the following statement today, published by the New York Times and other news outlets.

"The Grand Duchess Olga, a sister of the last Czar of Russia and one of three surviving members of the house of Romanoff has been found by American Red Cross workers living in a boxcar near Novorossisk, South Russia. A report reaching the national headquarters of the Red Cross today that this survivor of the most sumptuous court in the world was discovered toiling among fellow refugees from the territory recently conquered by the Bolsheviki, giving such assistance as she could. However, she was clad in rags and grateful for any food.

"Refugees have been pouring into Novorossisk by the thousands, all reduced to the most abject poverty. The South Russian Committee of the American Red Cross has been caring for them to the limit of its resources, and it was in the midst of this work that the plight of the royal refugee was discovered."

Grand Duchess Olga was divorced from Duke Peter of Oldenburg, and she later married a young army officer, Nicholas Kulikovsky. She has two sons, "but the Red Cross report does not reveal the fate of these or her children."

Olga's older sister, Grand Duchess Xenia, lives in London, and their mother, the Dowager Empress Marie is in Copenhagen.

Olga was born in 1882. She married Duke Peter in 1901, and they were divorced fifteen years later. There are no children from the first marriage.