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Jewish Renaissance - Dec. 01, 2007 JEWS OF VIENNA
By RUTH SCHNEIDERcourtesy of Jewish Renaissance Quarterly Cultural MagazineI greatly enjoyed the account in your October issue about the Jews in Vienna. However I felt that there was one omission I could not allow to pass unnoticed. There was only a passing reference to the Yiddish theater in Vienna though this blossomed between the wars, particularly between 1927 and the Nazi annexation in 1938. Vienna boasted its own thriving Yiddish theater companies, including the one based at the Nestroyhof (or The Reklame, as we used to call it) where my father, Abisz Meisels, was dramaturg and my mother, Klara Meisels, performed alongside such luminaries as Meier (and later Anna) Tselniker. It is this theater that Warren Rosenzweig is trying to reclaim as a Jewish theater. (Warren organized Tikun Olam, the jewish Theater Conference held in Vienna in March, which I attended with my son and which was featured in your October issue.) The theater also hosted American Yiddish companies featuring stars such as Morris Shwartz, Molly Picon, and Paul Baratov, as well as the world-famous Vilna Troupe, Sevilla Pastor and her Bucharest Company, and, in February 1938, the Habimah. My father′s translation of a play by Arnold Zweig, Die Sendung Semaels, was being staged when the Anschluss arrived. I remember seeing a poster advertising the play (in English: ′Sent by the Devil′) over a picture of Hitler. It′s hard to think of a more appropriate caption. Copyright © 2007 Jewish Renaissance
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