Sarah Gorby ^People

Gorby left Chisināu at age 17 to study music in Iasi, Romania, where she married Joseph Goldstein, a publisher who spoke both Romanian and Yiddish. Due to this cosmopolitan background, in her life she spoke many languages fluently.Her main language was Russian, her second language Yiddish, and she alsospoke French, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and English wel. Shemoved to Rome and then to Paris in the 1920s, but returned to lasi every summer until the outbreak of World War II to visit her husband.She also toured South America regularly during the 1930s. For a time in the 1930 sheperformed with her husband's last name (Sarah Goldstein) before switching to the stage name Sarah Gorby. In 1940, Gorby and her husband emigrated to Haitiand Gorby continued on to the United States. Around 1949, Gorby returned to Paris, upon her husband's death in Haiti in the 1950 she settled permanently in Paris.After settling in Paris she recorded quite a lot under the label Eledisc, whichwas then releasing many Yiddish language singers. She also continued to tour regu- larly and spent months of the year away from France in places such as Mexico, SouthAmerica, South Africa, and Israel.A noteworthy feature of her music was that she continued to sing in her nativeBessarabian Yiddish dialect for much ofh e r career.