Ruth Turkow-Kaminska (1919–2005)

Ruth Turkow-Kamińska, also known as Ruth Kamińska, Ruth Turkow, and Ruth Rosner, was born in Warsaw, Poland to Ida Kamińska, a leading Yiddish Polish actress, and Zygmunt Turkow, an actor and Yiddish stage director. Her maternal grandparents were two other illustrious Yiddish theater personalities, Ester Rachel Kamińska and Abraham Isaak Kamiński. From an early age, Ruth herself acted and worked in the theater. Her parents divorced in 1932. At the outbreak of World War II, her mother's apartment and theater were bombed, and Ruth spent three weeks in a shelter with her family and a group of friends, including Eddie (Adolf) Rosner, who proposed to her in the second week in the bunker. They then left Warsaw with a wave of refugees and reached Lviv. After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, they left for Rivne, and then traveled through Kharkiv and Baku to Bishkek (Frunze), the capital of Kyrgyzstan. There Ruth gave birth to a daughter, Erika. After the end of the war, Rosner was arrested for treason and when he was sentenced, Ruth was sent to the city of Kokshetau (Kokchetaw) in Kazakhstan, where she lived under house arrest. Despite many attempts at intervention by Ida Kamińska, Ruth and Erika could not get back to to Poland until 1956. Ruth began acting at the Jewish Theater in Warsaw. In 1968, she and her family left for Israel; from there they moved to the USA and settled in New York City. She published a memoir, entitled in English translation I Don't Want to Be Brave Anymore (1978).