Rivka Basman was born in Wilkomir, Lithuania to parents Yekhezkel and Tsipora. While in school, she and her friends were excited to read the poems and stories of Kadya Molodowsky, a Yiddish woman writer. Basman's father and her younger brother Arele were killed by the Germans in the Baltic. During World War II, Basman spent about two years in the Vilna ghetto. After that she was sent to the Kaiserwald concentration camp in Riga. Basman started writing poetry at Kaiserwald in order to cheer up fellow inmates. When the camp was liquidated, she saved her poems by smuggling them out in her mouth. After liberation, Basman lived in Belgrade from 1945 to 1947. While there she married Shmuel "Mula" Ben-Hayim and with him engaged in smuggling Jews out of Europe and past the British naval blockade to enter Mandate Palestine.
Education
In 1947 Basman made aliyah and then joined Kibbutz HaMa'apil. She received her teaching diploma from the Teachers' Seminary in Tel Aviv. She also studied literature while in New York at Columbia University. At her kibbutz she taught children and also joined the Yiddish poets' group Yung Yisroel While on the kibbutz she wrote and published her first volume of poetry, Toybn baym brunem , in 1959.
Writing career
During the years 1963 to 1965, her husband became the cultural attaché from Israel to the Soviet Union. Basman taught the children of the diplomats in Moscow during her time there. She also met with Russian Yiddish authors. Basman wrote her poems mostly in Yiddish. Since that time many of her poems have been translated into Hebrew. While he was living, her husband did the design and all of the illustrations for her books. After his death, she took his family name and added it in with hers. Basman resides in Herzliyyah Pituah. She continues to write poetry and is the head of the Union of Yiddish Writers located in Tel Aviv.
Awards
She was the recipient of the Itzik Manger Prize in 1984. Basman was also awarded the Chaim Zhitlowsky Prize in 1998. Other prizes and awards include the Arie Shamri prize in 1980; the Fischman prize in 1983; the prize awarded by the chairman of the WorldZionist Federation in 1989; the David Hofstein prize in 1992; The Beit Sholem Aleichem prize in 1994; the Leib Malakh prize awarded by Beit Leivick in 1995; and the Mendele prize of the city ofTel Aviv-Jaffa in 1997.
