Mink Coats & Barbed Wire

To be born into the third generation of the most celebrated theatrical family of Eastern Europe, to be a talented young actress and engaged to a remarkable trumpet layer - in the summer of 1939 her future looked set fair for Ruth Kaminska. The extraordinary turns of fortune that lay in store for her cast no warning shadow. Yet soon she was to be a penniless refugee fleeing from German bombs. Her fortune's wheel turned, and she found herself a star in the USSR entertaining Russian troops, living the life of a VIP with her husband, Adi Rosner, now so rich that he could afford on a single day to give her a mink and also a sable coat. When peace came the Rosners and their child planned to return to Poland, instead he was sent to a camp and Ruth, still wearing her mink coat, was clapped into a foetid prison to be despatched two years later into exile. There she lived like Robinson Crusoe, building her own house, training a wolf as a guard-dog and still later, existed by selling her blood, loading bricks, joining a circus; till at last came the happy day of her return to Poland. In all this turmoil only one constant factor persisted, the author's character: her courage, her resilience, her love of her child. That she survived, Ilya Ehrenburg attributed to her having "a lucky ticket", but readers may think it was her gay and indomitable spirit that saved her. …