Dobrochna Fire

I was born in Poland, spent two transitional years in Sweden, and ended up in the United States at the age of just over three. I grew up here but did so in a pre–World War II Polish bubble with an older brother, a younger sister, and survivor parents: one a righteous Gentile and one a rescued Jew. My mother’s identity as a teacher and Polish intellectual dictated to her that we would receive a double education: the best the American school system could offer (Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Vassar, and Swarthmore), and all the knowledge of Polish language, history, and literature that she could provide for us. My father, a dentist, had a talent for languages and spoke English not only fluently but without any accent even though he started speaking it after the age of 40. This background shaped many of the decisions I have made throughout my life.

I was always interested in languages: I studied French and Latin in high school, added Russian at Vassar College, and started teaching that language while still a graduate student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Upon completion of my doctoral degree, I taught at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and then a semester at Princeton. I was drawn away from academia by an offer from the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC, to work on a Polish-language textbook for the Defense Department. The next turn in my career path brought me to the field of publishing and ten years of working on journals of translations, mostly from Slavic languages, for M.E. Sharpe Publishers. During that time and since then, I expanded into translating from both Polish and Russian, editing and proofreading books for a number of publishers in a variety of fields, and often focusing on issues related to the Holocaust in Poland.

I especially enjoy working on projects that involve a complex of material and that draw on the richness of my background, education, and experience.