Objects

Bogert, Volynska, Rimma, nee, Galler

Rimma Volynska-Bogert was born in Russia and grew up in Warsaw. She was the daughter of a single mother, Leah Vertman, and Holocaust survivor. They together lived at Górska 14/13 in Warsaw. In her youth, she participated in the cabaret theatre organized by theTSKZ. In ‘68 she got married to an American professor by the name of Paul Best. Just before leaving for America to live with her new husband, she got a travel document in the mail which stated that she was no longer a Polish citizen because of her Jewish background. The boat that she took arrived in Montreal where her husband met her and brought her to New York City. In the States, she did her MA at UC Berkeley where she studied and was friends with Czesław Miłosz who greatly influenced how she came to understand Polish identity. She completed her PhD at Brown University. She has lectured at various universities throughout her career, though she still feels that her true calling was singing in the cabaret and feels that wasn’t a possibility for her outside of Poland. She is married to an American and has children. Her daughter resents her for not teaching her to speak Polish, and her son is very interested in Polish-Jewish history. Next year she will visit Poland with her family for the first time.

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Information about the object
ID number
MPOLIN-HM372
Copyright status
Nie