Di Velt Is A Bineh*
An active, professional Yiddish theater is in the center of Warsaw.
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GIDEON KEREN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
(*The world is a stage)
ne of the more surprising to celebrate and reminisce less ple's Poland, the socialist coun-
discoveries to be made in the pre-war bourgeois world and try of all working people, irre-
Poland is that of a profes- the lost traditions of Jewish life spective of their origin and
sional Yiddish theater in the ghetto and become more nationality, of which Polish and
company working in the center concerned with issues supposed- Jewish revolutionaries have been
of Warsaw.
ly affecting Jews and Poles in dreaming."
Maybe it should not be all that modern Polish society. These
In 1970, the company moved
surprising considering that be- would include Yiddish adapta- into its current premises in Grzy-
fore World War II, 3 1/2 million tions of Polish plays with a Jew- bowski Square. By now, the au-
Jews lived in Poland — at the ish theme, such as Korczak and dience consisted largely of Poles
time the country with the largest His Children, about the Jewish and Jews who did not under-
number of Jews after the United doctor who chose to die with his stand Yiddish and had to follow
States. But now, following the charges in the Warsaw ghetto the performance through the use
complete annihilation and dis- and Julius and Ethel, the story of headphones and a simultane-
persal of the pre-war and post- of the pair convicted of spying for ous translation. Furthermore,
war Jewish
communities in
Poland (where at
the most an esti-
mated 10,000
Jews still reside),
one wonders in
the first instance
not only why
there is a Yiddish
theater company
in Warsaw, but
also why it is vir-
tually the only
Yiddish theater in
the world both
funded by the
state and giving
regular perfor-
mances.
_ The Jewish
theater's begin-
nings in post-war
Poland were mod-
est. The first artis-
tic event to be
held in Yiddish
(top)
was a 1945 concert in Lublin
the company it-
A recer
actress Diana Blumenfeld
self
had lost a
performance of
gave to a small group of Jew-
large number of
'Tevye.'
ish survivors from Treblinka.
experienced
Four years later, the Ester
(left)
Jewish actors
Rachel Kaminska State Jew-
Szymon Szurmiej who left the
ish Theatre, with actress Ida
country follow-
Kaminska as its manager,
ing the anti-Semitic upheavals
was established. The reper-
of 1968 and 1969. Clearly, things
toire consisted of established
were in need of a change.
classics, such as Sholem Ale-
ichem's Tevye the Milkman
zymon Szurmiej has been
(which in turn was to inspire
director of the State Jew-
the American musical Fiddler
ish Theatre in Poland since
on the Roof), I. L. Peretz's A
1970. An agile, busy man
Night at the Old Market Place, the Soviet Union and executed fluent in four languages, Mr.
Anski's Dybbuk, Goldfaden's Two in the United States.
Szurmiej says his duties at the
Kunie Lemel, Gm-din's God, Man
There were also plays like The Ester Rachel Kaminska State
and the Devil and musical revues Song of My Nation, a depiction Jewish Theatre notwithstand-
like Goldfaden's Dream and of the history of Polish Jews in ing, he is one of the key figures
Stars on the Roof, about the van- the last two centuries. It con- in the Polish Jewish community
ished life in the shtetl.
sisted of sketches put together by and is kept busy with responsi-
Some contemporary pieces fol- the current company director bility for cultural events, social
lowed — or more to the point, Szymon Szurmiej. According to services, relations with the Pol-
had to follow a certain ideologi- old program notes, the play "re- ish authorities and the fort-
cal line and were no doubt more veals the traditions of coopera- nightly journal The Jewish Word,
to the liking of the Polish au- tion of the Jewish and Polish published in Yiddish and Polish.
thorities at the time. Authorities people in defense of their mutu-
Born in Volhynia near Lodz
were keen for the Jewish theater al country . . . the tragic years of in central Poland, Mr. Szurmiej
World War II and their joint grew up in a Yiddish-speaking
Gideon Keren is a writer in
struggle against the Nazi invad- household. When the Germans
London, England.
er, and finally the period of Peo- invaded Poland in 1939, he es-
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