Ida Kaminska is truly a child of the theatre. Her mother Esther Rachel Kaminska, was called "The Mother of the Jewish Stage," her father Abraham Izhok Kaminski was an actor, a playwright, and a well-known stage director.

Ida Kaminska started to act at the age of six. At fifteen she made her debut at her father's operetta theatre, and afterwards entered her mother's theatre playing in comedies and dramas. At eighteen she was already directing plays, mainly from the European repertoire.

In the years 1918-19 she traveled with the theatre in Russia, and from 1921 played in Warsaw in the "Centralny" Theatre, where she and Zygmunt Turkow organized the Warsaw Jewish Art Theatre (V.I.K.T.). She performed with this theatre in the towns throughout Poland, and in 1931 in Paris, Brussels and Lithuania.

From 1932 to 1939 she independently directed the "Drama Theatre of Ida Kaminska." During the German occupation of Poland she was the managing director of the Jewish State Theatre in Lviv. In 1941 when the occupation extended to Lviv, she fled to Russia.

She returned to Poland at the end of 1946, and from that time on she managed and directed The Jewish Theatre in Poland, which was proclaimed the Jewish State Theatre of Poland in 1949.

Ida Kaminska produced more than seventy plays, played about one hundred and fifty parts, translated [many] plays into Yiddish and dramatized several novels. She wrote two plays of her own that she produced with great success.

"Once There Was a King ..." -- 1928, and "Close the Bunkers" -- 1964. The role of Lautmanova in the Czech film, "The Shop on Main Street," was a world success for Madame Kaminska and brought her a nomination for the Best Actress Academy Award in 1967.

On September 18, 1967 the entire cultural community of Warsaw packed a large theatre in Warsaw to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Ida Kaminska's career as an actress. Greetings to Mme. Kaminska came from the entire world as a tribute to one of the most distinguished actresses in the world today.