Rimma Volynska-Bogert
None of us returned to Poland in order to continue our artistic careers. Our throats were cut in 1968.
None of us returned to Poland in order to continue our artistic careers. Our throats were cut in 1968. None of us found our artistic selves outside of Poland … It was Polish soil which favoured this. Of course, we wanted to stay on this soil and develop, but that’s not what happened. For historical reasons, artistic fulfillment for us was only possible on this soil. Not linguistically, but culturally, we are close to this soil and we must fulfill ourselves here.
Growing up in post-War Poland, Rimma was suspended between two worlds to which she moved closer and from which she moved further away, which simultaneously attracted her and repelled her – the worlds of Jewish fate, the worlds of those close to her, the worlds in which her parents and her ancestors were rooted. They were worlds from which those who had experienced them (worlds which they both loved and cursed) wished to shield Rimma. In the end, they were worlds which again provided the opportunity for survival and rebirth, but which were irretrievably wiped out in 1968, swept away from Polish soil. The post-War present – for that generation of Polish Jews, children of Holocaust survivors – the possibility of one’s own identity surviving was not encountered elsewhere (in communist countries). Despite everything, despite the hecatomb of the Holocaust, there was continuity, at least partially, with pre-War Jewish culture and with Polish culture
Rimma:
We all had a profound awareness that our families had perished. Absolutely everyone had died in the camps and ghettoes. I could say precisely where – in the Treblinka camp and in the Bialystok ghetto. Absolutely no one survived. Only we had been saved in the Soviet Union. And we returned here, to Poland, fully aware that we belonged here. But not only that we belonged here, but that it was our responsibility to continue the lives of those people, members of our families who had not survived. We not only had to preserve their memory, but also preserve their spirit. It was symbolically, extremely important that we remain precisely on this soil. Our ancestors had lived here for hundreds of years. So, after Stalin died in 1953 and we could leave the Soviet Union, our first duty was to obtain permission to return to Poland and to remain in Poland, because that is where we belonged. We were Polish Jews.
The World of Yiddish
Rimma:
We could speak a little Yiddish – some basic expressions. All of our parents had spoken Yiddish among themselves. Everything that they didn’t want us to know was spoken about in Yiddish. Friends would come to my mother. They cried and told each other various stories – all in Yiddish. When speaking with children, rarely was it in Yiddish. There were such families where the children were involved in everything. I wasn’t. But I could work out what was going on anyway.
I’ll never forget when my mum was sitting in the corner with her friends – and they were whispering, whispering, whispering about something. I said, “God, I really do have to learn German to understand what they’re whispering about”. For this reason, I, as well as others, learned the German language – to know what my mum was talking about.
Suddenly, I hear Russian spoken. Of course, I was born in Russia. I can understand everything and I hear that they are reading “Babi Yar” by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. They read this famous poem in Russian: No monument stands over Babi Yar./A steep cliff only, like the rudest readstone. I am afraid. /Today, I am as old./As the entire Jewish race itself./I see myself an ancient Israelite./I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt./And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured/And even now, I bear the marks of nails./It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself. The Philistines betrayed me – and now judge./I’m in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,/I’m persecuted, spat on, slandered…”
Yiddish was a kind of outlet for our parents – a type of escape mechanism. They couldn’t pass their terrible pain directly on to their children. But we still understood a little Yiddish anyway. Nevertheless, I didn’t know any families in Warsaw where Yiddish was the language used when speaking to children. It had already turned into a kind of historical language. But it was the language of their consciousness.
The one day mum had free, when she wasn’t sewing, was Sunday, when she would not be sitting with a needle in her hand. I’ll never forget how the day would begin – with her reading the “Folkstimme”, the Warsaw newspaper published in Yiddish. Yiddish was her mother tongue and truly, I didn’t have a problem with that. I completely understand why that was so. I understand what it means to protect your child from pain. I think that’s why we were isolated from Yiddish – because it was the language of their past and of terrible pain.
For Rimma’s generation, growing up during the post-War period, the institutionalised forms of Jewish communal life, which operated in Poland until 1968, often compensated for that break in the course of inter-generational transfers. Above all else, this refers to the Social-Cultural Association of Jews in Poland (TSKŻ), which organised cultural activities, summer camps, as well as Jewish education, the ”Yiddish Buch” publishing house and periodicals such as “Yiddishe Shriften” and “Folkstimme”.
Rimma:
Had there been no Jewish theatre, we would not have known anything about pre-War Jewish culture. How else would we have known? Our parents were mute and deaf. They were terribly frightened. They couldn’t speak about the past. I think about that terrible fear that my mum carried inside her – a fear from experiencing what she saw in Poland and Russia. To a certain degree, that fear choked her so that she just couldn’t speak about her past. And if it wasn’t for our cultural association, our TSKŻ, and if it was not for all our young people and all our educators who, together, carried parts of Jewish culture and stories, I wouldn’t have known anything. I would simply have learned from my mum that it should not be spoken about. Because, if we open our mouths and say something, there could be terrible consequences. Each time mouths are open, there are consequences. Those consequences are camps, they are prisons … So, a person learns to sit quietly and to say nothing. But my mother was content. What worried me was that we are here and the we belonged here. “Come on, let’s go to Warka where your great-great-great-great-great-grandparents are buried”. And more, “This is the street where I grew up”.
Living in Warsaw, Rimma took part in the youth cabaret which operated out of the Social-Cultural Association of Jews in Poland. The cabaret, run by Natan Tenebaum, was held in the “Babel” youth club at 5 Nowogrodzka street or in the Jewish Theatre.
Rimma:
The cabaret, run by Natan Tenenbaum, became a space for the revival of a certain part of Jewish culture – Jewish cabaret, Jewish satire, Jewish grotesque and Jewish “shmontzes”. It was all about revival and, at the same time, about us being active members of Polish society. The cabaret program included poetry recitals, the singing of cabaret songs, sometimes written by Natan Tennenbaum himself or by other Polish poets such as Tuwim, Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Władysław Broniewski, etc., etc. We also sang Jewish cabaret songs, because a pre-War Jewish cabaret used to exist too. So, in other words, the task of that cabaret was to recreate pre-War Jewish culture, especially cabaret. Maybe I should have said “a part of” Jewish pre-War culture. Already after emigration, in a telephone conversation, Natan explained the mission of the cabaret this way – “It was all about you growing up to be artists who are aware of your past”.
But the cabaret was also a place for personal growth. Some of Natan’s poems were set to music and had a political theme. To us, this was something new, because not all of us came from families where politics was discussed. In my family, for example, it was not. My mum carried within her a huge fear and, in our home, politics was never discussed. And here, there were certain poems to which one had to respond. One had to interpret them and to think about what it is that I’m singing. What are these poems about? Yes, this was a major task. This was about growing up. These poems and songs demanded that we interpret them, approach them in some way – another approach other than simply accepting reality. On the one hand, there was accepting reality. On the other hand, we now had our own, individual approach to the establishment. Now THAT was growing up! That cabaret made artists out of us and turned us into people with an awareness, citizens with an awareness.
At the end of the 1960’s, Rimma attends one of the few foreign language schools in Warsaw, where she learns English. In 1966, she meets a scholarship holder, an American living in Poland on a Fulbright Scholarship. In 1968, Rimma, experiencing the results of growing anti-Semitic sentiments, decides to emigrate. She applies for the possibility of going to the United States. She receives her travel documents and sails to New York on the trans-Atlantic liner, the “Batory”. She remains in the USA which she endeavours to obtain American citizenship. She obtains a Green Card and undertakes philological studies in Slavic languages and earns a doctorate from Brown University. For a number of years, she works as an academic lecturer. At the Berkley University, she meets another emigrant – Czesław Miłosz.
Rimma:
Of course, to him, a Pole was someone who, culturally, grew up on Polish soil. To him, we were all Poles. Being Polish meant having a different origin. Being Polish meant linking your consciousness with the difference in others who also come from Poland. Be it Lithuanian or be it Jewish – include yourself, enrich yourself in the culture of others, not only Poles, even Catholic. That is also part of our honour. We were precisely this combination. His understanding of who is Polish and who is not had a great impact on me, because I suddenly felt that, despite this, we were all “slapped in the face” in 1968, and me – among others, I am a Pole. I am from Poland. I am a Pole, but I am a Pole with Jewish origins.
It was an emotional wound, an emotional wound at losing Poland. It was the kind of wound caused by being thrown out. That I found myself in America was completely accidental. The wound has never healed – it has never healed. But I carry on just like others who have been traumatised. In the first years, one doesn’t realise it because you are too preoccupied with living on somehow. But it began to immerge gradually. Basically, what happened? An awareness of what actually occurred. And that’s why I’m here and not there. And that’s why I’m deprived of my own soil.
Currently, Rimma is a member of the Board of the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation whose headquarters is in Toronto. Two weeks before our meeting, in June 2017, at a Reunion of the 68 Association in the Israeli city of Nahariya, Rimma regained the Polish citizenship which had been taken away from her illegally in 1968.
Józef Markiewicz
Translation by Andrew Rajcher
