Rachel Boymvol

Who is Rachel Boymvol?

Rachel Boymvol, sometimes spelled Baumvoll or Baumwoll was a poet and translator who wrote in both Yiddish and Russian.

Rachel Boymvol was the daughter of Judah-Leib Boimvol, a theater manager and director who was murdered in a pogrom in 1920 while touring with his Jewish company. Rachel grew up in a culture fluent in both Yiddish and Russian. Her first poems, in Yiddish, were published in a Komsomol magazine when she was nine years old. She later wrote, "The Bolsheviks saved me from death, and I was a fervent Bolshevik. I drew five-cornered stars, but also six-cornered, Jewish ones, because the Bolsheviks loved Jews and would give us a country that would be called Yidland. In my head was a confusion that would last many years..."

During World War II, she went with her family to Tashkent. After the war she settled in Moscow, where she wrote poems, children's songs, and stories as well as translating from Yiddish to Russian. In 1971 she was able to emigrate to Israel, and settled with her family in Jerusalem.