A Program for “The Miracle of the Warsaw Ghetto”
Translation:
New Yiddish Folks Theatre
189 Second Avenue and 12th Street
Joseph Green and Jacob Ben Ami
The Miracle in the Ghetto
(Could not read smaller writing)
“The Miracle in the Ghetto” was produced by H. Leivick in 1944 and performed in the Yiddish Folks Theatre. The play performed in Yiddish is about what happened during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. There is a specific importance to the fact that the play was produced in 1944. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising actually occurred in 1943, and in a world of slow communication, the fact that a play was able to be produced only a year later is considered quite a feat. There is the belief that Leivick actually received information from the Polish Underground and that is the reason he was able to write and produce this play so quickly. This play was important because it showed many immigrants living in New York what they had escaped and left behind. Additionally, because of this Underground intelligence, people learned more about the Nazi occupation than they did from newspapers and other modes of information.
The producer of this play, H. Leivick, whose real name was Leivick Halpern was a Yiddish writer who came to America in the early 20th century from Siberia. His writings were usually about Jewish topics and frequently in Yiddish. Joseph Green, originally Yosef Grinberg was an actor from Poland. He came to America in the 1920s and was trained in drama in a German theater during the first World War. He was a director of several Yiddish films and took Yiddish films from the joking Yid to serious films. Jacob Ben-Ami was a Russian born actor who started acting at the age of 17 in Russian Theatres. After moving to New York, he became one of the stage’s most popular actors and the talk of the town. The Yiddish Folks Theatre opened in 1925 and was built by Louis Jaffe and was the home to Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre. The theatre had a good run until the mid-late 1930s when it was closed down and turned into a movie theater.
Work Cited:
Image Source:https://collections.mcny.org/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYW5ZY6R8H&SMLS=1&RW=989&RH=719
https://archive.org/stream/nybc201089#page/n108/mode/2up
https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/igumen/igumen_leyvik.htm
https://www.archinform.net/projekte/37091.htm
