"I even cried." Minsk resident found old photos on a bench, and 10 years later they returned to their family
A Minsk resident found old photographs belonging to someone else in a park — that was 10 years ago. She tried to find the owner through social networks then, but it didn't work. And now, in the spring of 2026, she tried again… This time, the post went so viral that the black-and-white photos (among them, there's even one a hundred years old) returned to their family. "Honestly, I even cried," says the man who once accidentally left them on the bench, writes "Onliner".
Author of that very post: "Old photos were lying on the bench, neatly stacked"
Volha Auseyenkovа published her post on Threads on May 12:
"10 years ago, while walking in Victory Park (Minsk), I found a bundle of old family photographs… I remember feeling so sorry to throw them away, because for someone, this was a whole life, someone's parents, grandmothers, grandfathers, memories…
I tried to find the owners back then: I asked acquaintances, posted something, but in those days, the internet and social networks didn't work at all like they do now.
As a result, I carefully folded the photographs to preserve them, and… happily forgot about them for almost 10 years.
And so today, while sorting through a closet, I stumbled upon this envelope again. I look at these faces and realize that perhaps someone is still looking for these photos or would at least be glad to know that they have been preserved.
[…] maybe a small internet miracle will happen. If by any chance you recognize these people, places, or surnames — write to me. And it would be great if you simply helped spread this post."
In a comment for "Onliner", the author of the post adds:
"In the park, the photos were lying on a bench, neatly stacked. I decided to take them because I understood: if there was sudden wind or rain, they would be damaged. It was a pity, especially one of the photos — it was clearly antique and fragile."
The 2026 post gathered more than 2.5 thousand likes, dozens of reposts, hundreds of comments — social network users did not remain indifferent. Especially since there was something to go on in the search for the photos' owner — the surname Tsivirka and the village of Kostawshchyna in the Berezinsky district were mentioned several times on the back of the cards.
"There were many suggestions! One girl even wrote to me that her dacha was next to Kostawshchyna, and offered to go together," says Volha. "And I told her: 'Let's do it!'"
But there was no need to go — the owner of the photos was found."
The six degrees of separation theory worked perfectly. After a couple of days, the photographs returned to the person who had already given up hope of finding them.
"I am very happy that the photos found their way home. But this story also had another continuation," smiles the Minsk resident. "As a result, my husband and I bought a dacha near that Kostawshchyna, in a nearby village. The places there are wonderful."
Owner of the photos: "They were with me for only half a day. I just got them from my cousin and immediately lost them!"
Uladzimir Tsivirka is the owner of those very photographs. Moreover, it was he who lost them 10 years ago.
The man was actively searching for his ancestors then. A genealogist reviewed old documents for him in the National Historical Archive of Belarus, with whom Uladzimir met in Victory Park.
"It was that day, in the morning, that I picked up the photographs from my cousin. I was very impressed by them. The historian and I met in the park after lunch. We sat on a bench, discussing his excerpts from the archive. I showed him the photos, and I was in a kind of euphoria from joy," the man recalls. "In short, when we got up from the bench, I didn't even notice that the photographs were left there…"
Uladzimir only realized the loss two days later. He tried to remember where he might have left them, drove around the places he had visited that day.
— Were you worried?
— Of course! I didn't even have time to make any copies. And, most importantly, I'm generally a very meticulous person. Everything has to be precise, correct, neat for me, I even keep all notebooks with more or less necessary notes — and then this happened!
Someone forwarded the link to Volha's post into a genealogy enthusiasts' chat, and there, a relative of Uladzimir's second cousin noticed it.
"Honestly, I wasn't just surprised that the photos returned to me, I even cried. It's some kind of miracle. All these years I wanted to make an album with old photos for my children, but after losing them, I couldn't get myself to do it… Now I will definitely do what I wanted!"
For the album idea, Uladzimir particularly lacked a photograph from his grandfather's wedding. An important family date, like the photo itself, is 100 years old this year.
Sometimes people throw away old photos themselves — and this is clearly not that case
There is no doubt that Uladzimir will do what he intended. The man knows the history of his ancestors along one of the branches back to the 15th century.
The family crest — a red crayfish with outstretched claws on a white background — hangs directly on the facade of the house.
"This is not a challenge to society, like, look, I am a nobleman. I am an ordinary person of the Soviet era.
But when I learned the family history more deeply, an understanding emerged that this, what was found, is mine."
Uladzimir lives in the Minsk microdistrict Tsna. He now has a private house, but the man spent his childhood in a two-story, 16-apartment building from "Vodokanal" (water utility company).
"Every resident of our two-story building had a plot for gardening. So, my house is built exactly where we once planted potatoes."
The search for information about his ancestors, Uladzimir admits, turned out to be an important task for him, in the category of "build a house, raise a son, plant a tree."
But it wasn't always so. His interest in digging into family legends appeared somewhere after forty.
"My children started asking: 'Dad, what do you know about our relatives?' And, truthfully, I didn't know much. I remembered my grandmother, when I was little, repeating the phrase: 'Oh, you're so haughty, Pan Hadzycki!' And I wondered, why did she say that?"
"And when the archives were opened, it turned out that my grandfather had a double surname — Hadzycki-Tsivirka."
"I now have certificates for everything. Even for the fact that Tsvyrka and Tsivirka are the same surname," smiles Uladzimir.
The double surname was confirmed, among other things, by responses from the ZAGS (Civil Registry Office) and KGB archives.
Uladzimir once stumbled upon an article about the fate of the Hadzycki-Tsivirka family, who lived in the 18th century in Bahushevichy.
"The historian who wrote that text agreed to help with the search. He warned me: in the archives, you might either get lucky or not — depending on what survived after wars and revolutions. To get a foothold and search, I needed to know where my ancestors lived at the end of the 19th century.
I knew: the village of Zayamnaie in the Berezinsky district (approximately five kilometers from Kostawshchyna, another ancestral village mentioned in the note on the back. — Onliner's note). And I, you could say, was lucky: everything about my family was preserved very deeply.
For my surname in the archive — four volumes of 2000 pages each."
They literally dug back to Adam — that was the name of the man from whom the Hadzycki-Tsivirka family line originated.
"In 1599, King Sigismund of Poland granted the noble Adam Hadzycki-Tsivirka the Ozaryshcha estate with peasants in Braslaw county for life, and later as a patrimonial and hereditary possession. The estate passed by inheritance to Adam's sons Felix, Stsyapan, and Yury, and later to his grandsons Kanstantsin and Yury Stsyapanavich, Vasil and Mikalai Yuryevich (…) Adam's grandchildren (…) were taken as the progenitors (protoplasts) of their family when the noble origin was first determined in the Minsk Noble Deputational Assembly on September 3, 1802."
Uladzimir also has more profound information about his ancestors' past, but in this text, overly ancient details can be omitted.
Despite the fact that ten years have passed since the active search for his roots, Uladzimir is still impressed.
"The most intense feelings were when I came to look at books in the archive. You pick up an edition that is 200 years old, you see your ancestors there, and your heart races — an adrenaline rush.
It feels as if you are touching your history with your own hands. These were very important moments for me."
Thanks to this interest, the man learned much more about his immediate ancestors. For example, the fate of his grandfather, also Uladzimir, who was repressed in the 1930s, became a bit clearer.
The man even had a discovery about his own father. It turned out that his correct name was Anton, not Anatol, as the son had thought his entire life.
"My father didn't like the name Anton, so at the first opportunity, he managed to register himself as Anatol."
Engaged in searching for the past, the man traveled to the birthplaces of his ancestors, and there are several of them.
"One of the Tsivirka-Hadzyckis moved to the Berezinsky district from near Nesvizh. There are villages of Rakavichy and Buchny, where many Tsivirkas lived, and still live today. I'm glad I visited there. And near Zayamnaie, already near Berezino, I found the foundation where my grandfather's house stood at the end of the 19th century."
Little Uladzimir with his father and other relatives near the fence of his grandmother's house in Kostawshchyna, Berezinsky district, 1971
Among the photographs that returned to the family, there are also several Soviet ones. In this one, the younger boy is Uladzimir, the journalists' interlocutor; behind him stands his father, and next to him, his cousin. Other people are his father's colleagues from "Vodokanal". May Day
Relatives of the Tsivirka family in front of a wooden house on Kaltsou Street, approximately mid-1960s
In Kostawshchyna, another village that "appears" on the backs of the found photographs, the house where his grandmother lived has been preserved.
"Until I was seven years old, I spent a lot of time there. Now the fence is completely dilapidated, but the house stands. This year I will go there again. I've already decided: if the house isn't completely rotten, maybe I'll buy it out."
The main photo among those found on the bench is of Uladzimir's grandparents' wedding. The newlyweds were named Uladzimir Branislavavich Hadzycki-Tsivirka and Viera Heorhiyeuna Zhylinskaya.
"The wedding was in 1926. Two years later, their first child was born."
Despite the harsh century, the couple's wedding rings, each with initials, have been preserved in the family. There is also another photo of the young family. It shows Uladzimir with his wife and three daughters.
"At the time of this photo, my dad hadn't been born yet. He was born to Uladzimir and Viera in 1937. He was about six months old when his father was repressed."
Uladzimir says that in some of the faces of his ancestors in the old photos, he recognizes his contemporaries.
"One of the girls — I don't know her name — looks very much like my cousin. And if you take my grandfather and my cousin — they have exactly the same face."
Uladzimir's great-grandmother on his grandmother's side, of the Zhylinskaya family, sits in the chair. To the right stands Viera, Uladzimir's grandmother, to the left — her sister Yuzefa
Relatives of the family with the surname Lukashevich
Viera and Uladzimir Tsivirka (Hadzycki-Tsivirka)
Uladzimir himself has two sons, both show great interest in "excavating" the family history. His wife does too, so all discoveries have been discussed many times at the table.
"By the way, my younger son's second child was born on January 31st this year. And what do you think he named him? Correct: Adam."
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