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The Yiddish Art Theatre in Paris after the Holocaust, 1944–1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2020

Nick Underwood
Nick Underwood*
Affiliation:
Department of History, College of Idaho
*
Email: niun4614@colorado.edu
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Almost as soon as Paris was liberated from Nazi Occupation on 25 August 1944, Yiddish actors took back the stages on which they had once performed. In fact, on 20 December 1944, while war and the Holocaust still raged, a small cohort of actors produced what they advertised in the Naye prese as the “first grand performance by the ‘Yiddish folks-bine.’” This performance was to take place at the four-hundred-seat Théâtre Lancry, a performance space located in Paris's 10th arrondissement, not far from the Place de la République and the Marais. “Lancry,” as it was known, had played host to Yiddish theatre as early as 1903 and, during the interwar years, it was the center of Parisian Yiddish cultural activity: dozens of theatre performances occurred there and it was where the Kultur-lige pariz was based, among other institutions. During the postwar years, it also went by the name Théâtre de la République after 1947 and Théâtre du Nouveau-Lancry after 1951, but many still referred to it simply as “Lancry.”

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Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 351 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2020

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Mark Lee Smith for his generosity in sharing with me sources related to Parizer shriftn, Madeleine Cohen for her help in obtaining digital copies of some YKUT materials from the Widener Library at Harvard University, and Annette Aronowicz, Marlis Schweitzer, and Theatre Survey's reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this essay. The Western Society for French History's Millstone Fellowship and a Fellowship from the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) supported research for this piece.

Parizer shriftn was misspelled as Parizer shrift in the acknowledgment of the original online version of this article. This has been corrected here and a corrigendum has been published.

References

Notes

1 Press clipping, Naye prese, 9 December 1944, 4o COL 020/20 (3), Collection Gérard Frydman: Le Théâtre yiddish à Paris, 1889–1983, Le YKUT 1944–1950, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Richelieu, Paris, France (hereinafter, Collection Gérard Frydman). Naye prese was a Yiddish communist daily newspaper that dated to 1934 and had just resumed publication in 1944 after four years underground.

2 “Di grindung fun a yidishn folks-teater in pariz,” Naye tsayt, 12 May 1945, 3.

3 “10 yor PYAT, 1935 to 1945,” program, RG 1297, Leib Lensky Archives, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, USA. On PYAT, see Nick Underwood, “Staging a New Community: Immigrant Yiddish Culture and Diaspora Nationalism in Interwar Paris, 1919–1940” (Ph.D. diss., Dept. History, University of Colorado Boulder, 2016), chap. 3.

4 On France and the “myth of silence,” see Wieviorka, Annette, The Era of the Witness, trans. Stark, Jared (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Lindenberg, Judith, ed., Premiers savoirs de la Shoah (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2017)Google Scholar. In the United States, see Diner, Hasia R., We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962 (New York: New York University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

5 On postwar Holocaust remembrances in France, see Heuman, Johannes, The Holocaust and French Historical Culture, 1945–65 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)Google Scholar, and the recent special issue, guest-edited by Perego, Simon, “Première(s) mémoire(s): Les Juifs de France et la Shoah, de la Libération à la guerre des Six Jours,” Archives Juives 51.2 (2018)Google Scholar.

6 For example, see Greene, Daniel, The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011)Google Scholar. On France as a “melting pot,” see Noiriel, Gérard, The French Melting Pot: Immigration, Citizenship, and National Identity, trans. de Laforcade, Geoffroy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

7 Debra Caplan argues that Yiddish theatre was seminal in the development of twentieth-century theatre. Caplan, , Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), 9Google Scholar.

8 Green, Nancy L., The Pletzl of Paris: Jewish Immigrant Workers in the Belle Epoque (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1986)Google Scholar.

9 On the AEAR, see Fitch, Mattie, “The People and the Workers: Communist Cultural Politics during the Popular Front in France,” Twentieth Century Communism 9.9 (2015): 40–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, Julian, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–38 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 119–21Google Scholar; and Christopher Moore, “Music in France and the Popular Front (1934–1938): Politics, Aesthetics and Reception” (Ph.D. diss., Schulich School of Music, McGill University, 2006).

10 On Yiddish culture in Paris after the war, see de Bollardière, Constance Pâris, “Fajwel Schrager (né Ostrynski), bundiste, directeur de l'ORT—France et du bureau parisien de l'Union mondiale-ORT,” Archives Juives 48.1 (2015): 136–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Bollardière, , “Mutualité, fraternité et travail social chez les bundistes de France (1944–1947),” Archives Juives 45.1 (2012): 27–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the essays by de Bollardière, “‘Écritures de la destruction’ et reconstruction: Yankev Pat, auteur et acteur de monde yiddish—Le cas de Paris, 1946–1948” (275–91), Simon Perego, “De l’écrit à l'oral: Le Recours aux œuvres littéraires dans les commémorations de la révolte du ghetto de Varsovie (Paris, 1945–1967)” (293–317), and Éléonore Biezunski, “Miroir des mémoires: Der Teater Shpigl, une revue théâtrale yiddish parisienne de l'après-guerre” (319–34), all in Premiers savoirs de la Shoah, ed. Lindenberg. See also Schwarz, Jan, Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Slucki, David, The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Toward a Global History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), chap. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Aronowicz, Annette, “Homens mapole: Hope in the Immediate Postwar Period,” Jewish Quarterly Review 98.3 (2008): 355–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Biezunski.

12 Jockusch, Laura, “Breaking the Silence: The Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris and the Writing of Holocaust History in Liberated France,” in After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence, ed. Cesarani, David and Sundquist, Eric J. (London: Routledge, 2012), 67–81Google Scholar.

13 Robert Gildea reminds us that immigrant Jews were a fundamental component of the French Resistance. See Gildea, , Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 After the Holocaust, the Jewish population of France was relatively large. Prior to the war, it was about 300,000 (including immigrant Jews and so-called native Jews). Of this, 75,000 Jews, two-thirds of whom were foreign born, were deported. Of those 75,000 deported Jews, Serge Klarsfeld estimates that 2,500 returned. See Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews Deported from France, 1942–1944: Documentation of the Deportation of the Victims of the Final Solution in France (New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1983). Overall, approximately 200,000 French (native and immigrant) Jews survived. It is also estimated that 37,000 Jews who had not previously lived in France, moved there between 1944 and 1949. On these last figures, see Mandel, Maud, “The Encounter between ‘Native’ and ‘Immigrant’ Jews in Post-Holocaust France: Negotiating Difference,” in Post-Holocaust France and the Jews, 1945–1955, ed. Hand, Seán and Katz, Steven T. (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 38–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 40–1.

15 A. C., “France: The Crisis of the Fourth Republic,” The World Today 4.10 (1948): 413–21; and Rioux, Jean-Pierre, The Fourth Republic, 1944–1958, trans. Rogers, Godfrey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

16 See Rioux; Gildea, Fighters; and Drake, David, Paris at War: 1939–1944 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Rousso, Henry, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 15–18Google Scholar.

18 Koreman, Megan, The Expectation of Justice: France 1944–1946 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 260–1Google Scholar.

19 Virgili, Fabrice, Shorn Women: Gender and Punishment in Liberation France, trans. Flower, John (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2002)Google Scholar.

20 Jockusch, “Breaking the Silence.” See also Sartre, Jean Paul, Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate, trans. Becker, George J. (New York: Schocken, 1995)Google Scholar; Gross, Jan T., Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2007)Google Scholar; Renée Poznanski, “French Apprehensions, Jewish Expectations: From a Social Imaginary to a Political Practice,” in The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WW II, ed. David Bankier (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books), 25–57.

21 Mandel, Maud S., In the Aftermath of Genocide: Armenians and Jews in Twentieth-Century France (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hyman, Paula E., The Jews of Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 199CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Doron, Daniella, Jewish Youth and Identity in Postwar France: Rebuilding Family and Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015)Google Scholar. Laura Jockusch shows that Paris was the centerpiece in Jews’ attempts to document the Holocaust in its immediate aftermath. See Jockusch, , Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar. Also see Lisa Moses Leff, “Post-Holocaust Book Restitutions: How One State Agency Helped Revive Republican Franco-Judaism,” in Post-Holocaust France and the Jews, ed. Hand and Katz, 71–84. Relatedly, David Weinberg has argued that France was the site of the formation of a new type of international Jewish community, illustrating how the involvement of foreign aid organizations ushered in an era where American Jewish organizations seemingly had large influence over the growth of the French community. Weinberg, “The Revival of French Jewry in Post-Holocaust France: Challenges and Opportunities,” in Post-Holocaust France and the Jews, ed. Hand and Katz, 26–37, and Weinberg, , Recovering a Voice: West European Jewish Communities after the Holocaust (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 For recent studies on the postwar years that analyze Eastern European Jews in France, see Adler, K. H., Jews and Gender in Liberation France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Faure, Laura Hobson, Un “Plan Marshall Juif”: La Présence juive américaine en France après la Shoah, 1944–1954 (Paris: Éditions Armand Colin, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 See Conan, Éric and Rousso, Henry, Vichy: An Ever-Present Past, trans. and annot. Bracher, Nathan (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College [Lebanon, NH: UPNE], 1998)Google Scholar; Rousso; and Gildea, Robert, France since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar. For a challenge to this historiographical trend, see Azouvi, François, Le Mythe du grand silence: Auschwitz, les Français, le mémoire (Paris: Fayard, 2012)Google Scholar; and Lindenberg.

24 Fogg, Shannon L., Stealing Home: Looting, Restitution, and Reconstructing Jewish Lives in France, 1942–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)Google Scholar; Auslander, Leora, “Coming Home? Jews in Postwar Paris,” Journal of Contemporary History 40.2 (2005): 237–59Google Scholar; and David Cesarani, “Challenging the ‘Myth of Silence’: Postwar Responses to the Destruction of European Jewry,” in After the Holocaust, ed. Cesarani and Sundquist, 15–38. On Bundist Yiddish culture in Paris after the war, also see de Bollardière, “Fajwel Schrager,” and de Bollardière, “Mutualité.”

25 On being French and Jewish before the Holocaust, see Malinovich, Nadia, French and Jewish: Culture and the Politics of Identity in Early Twentieth-Century France (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 For more on post-Holocaust writing in Parizer shriftn, see See Smith, Mark L., The Yiddish Historians and the Struggle for a Jewish History of the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2019)Google Scholar. Also see Smith, “No Silence in Yiddish: Popular and Scholarly Writing about the Holocaust in the Early Postwar Years,” in After the Holocaust, ed. Cesarani and Sundquist, 55–65.

27 Vaynfeld, I., “Vegn yidish teater (a por batrakhtungen),” Parizer shriftn, no. 1 (October 1945): 75–6Google Scholar.

28 Weinberg, David, “The Renewal of Jewish Life in France after the Holocaust,” in She'erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, ed. Gutman, Yisrael and Saf, Avital (Proceedings of the Sixth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 169–74Google Scholar; Weinberg, Recovering a Voice; Hand and Katz; Schwarz; Slucki, chap. 3; and David G. Roskies, “Dividing the Ruins: Communal Memory in Yiddish and Hebrew,” in After the Holocaust, ed. Cesarani and Sundquist, 82–101, at 83.

29 PYAT is listed in Zalman Zylbercweig's Leksikon fun yidishn teater, where the entry correctly notes the connection between the development of PYAT and the arrival in Paris in the early 1930s of former members of the Vilna Troupe: David Licht, Avrom-Yankev (Jakob) Mansdorf, Yankev Kurlender, and Jacob Rothbaum. See “PYAT,” in Zylbercweig, , ed., Leksikon fun yidishn teater, vol. 3 (New York: Farlag Elisheva, 1959), 1757–8Google Scholar.

30 Union des théâtres indépendants de France, membership card, 1937, Archives Fela Feldman, Medem Bibliothèque, Paris, France.

31 “10 yor PYAT, 1935–1945,” program.

32 In other postwar Parisian Yiddish publications, such as I. Spero et al., Yizkor-Bukh zum ondenk fun 14 umgekumene parizer yidishe shrayber (Paris: Farlag Oyfsnay, 1946), the Yiddish word “ermordet” (murdered) is used to describe those killed by the Nazis or Vichy collaborators during the Holocaust.

33 “10 yor PYAT, 1935–1945,” program. See Cyril Robinson, “Gerard Frydman, His Life in the Yiddish Theater in Paris,” Part II, accessed 15 November 2016, www.jewishmag.com/117mag/yiddishtheater2/yiddishtheater2.htm.

34 Playbill, Goldgreber, 4o COL 020/8, Gérard Frydman Collection.

35 “10 yor PYAT, 1935–1945,” program.

36 See Spero et al.

37 I. Spero, “Tsen yor ‘PIAT,’” Parizer shriftn, no. 1 (October 1945): 78–9.

38 See Puchner, Martin, Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

39 Haim Sloves quoted in “Manifest fun farband fun yidishe kultur-gezelshaftn in frankraykh,” Parizer shriftn 1 (October 1945): 88–9, at 88.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 On this far-reaching mission of the Farband, see “Manifest fun farband,” 88, 89; and “Tetikayt fun kultur-farband,” Parizer shriftn 1 (October 1945): 90–1. Because of the postwar prominence of the French Community Party, which was well-supported because of its reputation as a major part of the French Resistance, PYAT's move away from workers’ theatre ought to be read as different from similar moves away from these ideals elsewhere, for example, in the US “Red Scare.”

43 For example, see Lebovics, Herman, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 I. Vaynfeld, “Der ‘YKUT’ un Fishke der krumer,” Parizer shriftn, nos. 2–3 (March 1946): 130–3, at 130.

45 Ibid., 130.

46 See Picard, Jacques, Gebrochene Zeit: Jüdische Paare im Exil (Zurich: Ammann, 2009)Google Scholar.

47 See M. L., “Der ‘dibuk’ oyf frantsoyzish,” Naye prese, 30 January 1947, 3.

48 Tsentral kultur-rat's 1946/1947 plan, 2, CMXXV/10/6, Fonds David Diamant, Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris, France (hereinafter, Fonds David Diamant).

49 YKUT theatre initiative campaign letter, n.d., Image ID W432172_51, Yiddish Theater in France Collection, 1907–1950, Widener Library, Harvard University, Boston, MA (hereinafter, Yiddish Theater in France Collection).

50 Grant, Alfred, “Fun kegnzaytiker hilf—tsum kamf farn natsionaln kium,” in Tsen yor farband fun idishe gezelshaftn in frankraykh (Paris: Farlag Oyfsnay, 1948), 9–42Google Scholar, at 37.

51 YKUT letterhead, Image ID W432172_52, Yiddish Theater in France.

52 Szeintuch, Yechiel and Trinh, Miriam, eds., Between Destruction and Reconstruction, vol. 1: The Correspondence between M. Strigler and H. Leyvick, 1945–1952 (Yiddish and Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 2015)Google Scholar; Schwarz, 69–74.

53 “Kultur-khronik,” Parizer shriftn, no. 4 (September 1946): 95.

54 “Tetikayt funem farband fun yidisher kultur-gezelshaftn in frankraykh,” Parizer shriftn, nos. 2–3 (March 1946): 136.

55 Society of Friends of YKUT, letters to supporters, n.d., Image IDs W432172_44, W432172_45, W432172_46, W432172_47, and W432172_48, Yiddish Theater in France Collection.

56 Society of Friends of YKUT, letter to supporters, n.d., Image IDs W432172_44 and W432172_45, Yiddish Theater in France Collection.

57 Ibid. The monthly membership fee would be roughly equivalent to US$350 in 2020.

58 On shuls in France, see Snyder, Saskia Coenen, Building a Public Judaism: Synagogues and Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013Google Scholar), chap. 4.

59 On Homens mapole, see Aronowicz, “Homens mapole: Hope,” as well as Aronowicz, Annette, “Haim Sloves, the Jewish People, and a Jewish Communist's Allegiances,” Jewish Social Studies 9.1 (2002): 95–142CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aronowicz, , “The Downfall of Haman: Postwar Yiddish Theater between Secular and Sacred,” AJS Review 32.2 (2008): 369–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Aronowicz, , “Joy to the Goy and Happiness to the Jew: Communist and Jewish Aspirations in a Postwar Purimshpil,” in Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business, ed. Berkowitz, Joel and Henry, Barbara (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012): 275–94Google Scholar.

60 “Zuntig in konservatarie a klaynkunst forshtelung fun ‘YKUT,’” Naye prese, 23 January 1947, 4; “Tetikayt funem farband.”

61 YKUT also performed Tevye der milkhiker in 1948, receiving positive reviews in the French-language Jewish press. See Harry Melida, “Les Filles de Tévié au Théâtre de l'Ambigu,” Quand Même!, 3 (March 1948), 16.

62 Program, Fischeké le boîteux, 4o COL 020/20 (2), Collection Gérard Frydman.

63 Doron, 2–4.

64 Program, Fischeké le boîteux.

65 Vaynfeld, “Der ‘YKUT’ un Fishke der krumer.”

66 Ibid., 13.

67 Moyshe Shulshtayn, “Fishke der Krumer in yid. kunst-teater,” Naye prese, November n.d., 1945, n.p., news clipping, 4o COL 020/20 (3), Gérard Frydman Collection.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid.

70 See Aronowicz, “Homens mapole: Hope”; Aronowicz, “Haim Sloves”; Aronowicz, “Downfall of Haman”; and Aronowicz, “Joy to the Goy.”

71 Aronowicz, “Haim Sloves,” 131.

72 On the French Communist Party after the war, see Tiersky, Ronald, French Communism, 1920–1972 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), chaps. 5 and 6Google Scholar.

73 Aronowicz, “Joy to the Goy,” 281.

74 Aronowicz, “Homens mapole: Hope,” 358.

75 Playbill, Homens mapole, 4o COL 020/21 (1), Gérard Frydman Collection.

76 Aronowicz, “Joy to the Goy,” 282.

77 “Encore un fois, Aman-le-Terrible,” Droit et liberté, 20 February 1946, 2.

78 Typed summary of La Triste Fin d'Aman le terrible (1948), 4o COL 20 020/22 (3), Gérard Frydman Collection.

79 Ibid.

80 Sloves, Haim, “Foreword,” in Homens mapole (Paris: Oyfsnay, 1949)Google Scholar, reproduced in English in Aronowicz, “Joy to the Goy,” 292.

81 The playbill for this performance lists six pull quotes from the French-language press and six from the Yiddish press. Playbill, La Triste Fin d'Aman le terrible, 4o COL 020/22 (1), Collection Gérard Frydman.

82 Letter from André Barsacq, dated 10 July 1948, 4o COL 020/22 (2), Gérard Frydman Collection.

83 Playbill, A goldfadn kholem, 4o COL 020/25 (5); and typescript for A goldfadn kholem, 4o COL 020/25 (1), Gérard Frydman Collection.

84 Playbill, A goldfadn kholem.

85 Ibid.

86 Ibid.

87 M. L., “Far der nayer oyfirung fun ‘yidishn kunst-teater,’ a geshprekh mitn rezshiser yankev botboym,” Naye prese, 29 March 1947, 3.

88 Quoted in Aronowicz, “Downfall of Hamen,” 381; N. Danek, “Der kholem fun YKUT,” Ofsnay, n.d. 1947, “news clipping,” 4o COL 020/25 (7), Gérard Frydman Collection. N. Danek also covered Homens mapole favorably.

89 Khil Aron, “Jankev Rotboyms retsital in teater sara bernhard,” Naye prese, 20 February 1947, 3.

90 “Geshlosn der ‘YKUT’-teater,” Undzer vort, 28 January 1950, 2.

91 Report, “Note sur l'YKUT,” n.d., 1, CMXXV/10/6, Fonds David Diamant.

92 Ibid.

93 Society of Friends of YKUT, letter to supporters, n.d., Image IDs W432172_47 and W432172_48, Yiddish Theater in France Collection.

94 The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint) contributed 150,000 francs for YKUT to use in its effort to move toward independence. Report, “Note sur l'YKUT,” n.d., 2. On the Joint in France, see Faure.

95 Report, “Note sur l'YKUT,” n.d., 2. Mansdorf, as mentioned in note 29, had been a Vilna Troupe member.

96 Ibid., 3.

97 In 30 January 1949, the newspaper Yidishe vokh ran a photo from the performance of Tipe varstlen that read, “a dramatic scene from the play Tipe vartslen, a play against racism,” Yidisher vokh, 30 January 1949, 4.