Irena Anders

Irena Renata Anders (12 May 1920 – 29 November 2010), born Iryna Renata Jarosiewicz (Yarosevych), was a Polish-Ukrainian stage actress and singer. During World War II she performed with Henryk Wars' troupe and later with the Polska Parada (Polish Parade) band, entertaining the Polish Armed Forces in the West (commanded by General Władysław Anders, her future husband). She was one of the first singers to perform the anthem, Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino (The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino).

Life and career

She was born as Iryna Yarosevych into a Ukrainian family in Bruntál, Czechoslovakia (present-day Czech Republic), where her father Mykola Yarosevych was a chaplain for Greek-Catholic soldiers. Her mother Olena Yarosevych (née Nyzhankivska) came from a Ukrainian family which counted theater artists and musicians as their members, was the native sister of composer Ostap Nyzhankivsky and opera singer Oleksandr Nyzhankivsky. Shortly after her birth, her family migrated eastward to what was then designated the Ukrainian People's Republic, and her father became chaplain of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and later was a priest in the villages Sapohiv and Bryn, which shortly became part of Poland. In 1926 the family moved to Lwów (today Lviv), where Iryna went to a Greek Catholic gymnasium and Ukrainian trading school. From 1929 to 1939 she also studied in the Lysenko Lviv Musical Institute, in her cousin Nestor Nyzhankivsky's fortepiano class, and later in the vocal class of Mariya Sokil and Lidiya Ulukhanova.

She used the stage name Renata Bogdańska. After World War II, she migrated to the United Kingdom.