Audio clip from an oral history interview with Heini Gruffudd: Kate Bosse-Griffiths's and the Welsh language, Swansea, 29 April 2022

Description

This audio clip is from an oral history interview with Heini Gruffudd, recorded by the Centre for the Movement of People, Aberystwyth University, on 29 April 2022. In the clip, Heini talks about His mother’s, Kate Bosse-Griffiths’s, attitude to the Welsh language.

Kate-Boss Griffiths – a short biography.

Kate Bosse-Griffiths was a Jewish refugee who fled to Britain from Germany in 1937. She married Welshman John Gwyn Griffiths in September 1939 and moved to Pentre in the Rhondda. She learned Welsh and became a passionate advocate for the Welsh language, even publishing poetry and books in Welsh. The family moved to Swansea after the war, where she continued to write for the Welsh-language press, supporting the creation of the Cymdeithas yr Iaith (Welsh Language Society) in 1962. She died in Swansea in 1998.

Transcript

Roedd mam yn amlwg oherwydd y profiadau yn yr Almaen wedi mynd i deimlo yn erbyn awdurdodau gormesol. Roedd hwnna’n bwysig iawn iddi. Ac yng Nghymru roedd hi’n gweld bod yr iaith Gymraeg o dan ormes, heb hawliau, felly roedd hi’n frwd iawn dros y Gymraeg, i berthyn i Gymru, brwd dros y Gymraeg a wedyn cymryd rhan mewn ymgyrchoedd pan ddechreuodd Cymdeithas yr Iaith. Fe wrthododd hi dalu dirwy parcio achos bod e’n Saesneg, mynd i’r Llys. Cwbl gefnogol i Blaid Cymru hefyd, gweld bod y Blaid yn cynnig ffordd ymlaen i Gymru oedd yn ffordd oedd yn amddiffyn gwareiddiad, ac iddi hi roedd hi’n sicr yn gweld y Gymraeg a Chymru a phosibiliadau i roi ateb i fyd heddychol newydd.

Sources.

Centre for the Movement of People, Aberystwyth University, Oral history interview with Heini Gruffudd (23 September 2021)
Wikipedia, Käthe Bosse-Griffiths (2022) [accessed 2 August 2022]
‘Kate Bosse-Griffiths’, Refugees from National Socialism in Wales [accessed 26 September 2024]