|
This coming Wednesday on the ship
"America," there will be traveling to Europe a theatre
person who embodies in himself six various abilities, or
talents -- a stage director, a theatre director, an actor, a
singer, an impresario, and a social activist, -- Herman
Yablokoff. He travels to Europe on the initiative and with
the blessing of the Yiddish Actors' Union and Jewish
Workers' Committee. The mission is to bring a little joy and
contributions to the "D.P." camps, where there lives -- if
you can call it "living" -- the most unhappy or the unhappy
victims of the last war.
Besides the camps in
Germany, Yablokoff will also visit the Jewish communities in Poland,
Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, France, Holland,
Czechoslovakia, Italy, Switzerland and England, a whole
dozen countries, incidentally, as president of the Grodno
Association. He will also bring a special word of
consolation -- and probably more tangible help -- to his
countrymen, to those who have experienced the great
disaster.
So as Molly Picon and Jacob Kalich did
before him, now Yablokoff travels at his own expense. He has
a sensible and deeply human explanation for this:
"My rule is that actors should not
take more than they give. We Yiddish actors have taken a lot
from the Jews of Poland and Eastern Europe. Before the war a
great many of us traveled to Poland and Romania and Hungary and
returned from there with full pockets. Now is the time for
us to give back to them. I will sing in the camps for the Jews
who once ran to hear us in Lodz and in Warsaw, in Iasi and
in Budapest. By the way, who knows what tomorrow might be
like? The tens of thousands of Jews from the camps
will, in a year, I hope, already be residents of America, of
the Land of Israel, of South America, or of England. They will
pay us twice as much for our coming to them now -- in their
great, severe need."
In his career on the Yiddish stage
Herman Yablokoff always was excellent with daring
entrepreneurship and common sense. During the war years in
this country, he dared to perform on stage Yiddish operettas
that could be compared in size to the most glorious years of
Yiddish theatre. His operettas have always been solemn and
have shown an honest, sincere attitude to the theatre
public.
"Der payatz (The Clown)," "Goldele, the
Baker's Daughter," "Sammy's Bar Mitzvah," "Papirosn
(Cigarettes)," "The Dishwasher," -- each of these pieces had
a content that could be retold, even a moral; it was musical
and neat. With some twenty-five offerings Yablokoff has enriched
the Yiddish theatre for the Jews, for whom he has held a
featured position as one of the most successful theatre
directors. There were seasons when he managed two of the
largest Yiddish theatres on the "Avenue," with the Public
and with the Second Avenue Theatre, giving up his role as
director and theatre impresario, despite his great
popularity in the Yiddish theatre world.
If you walk with him on the "Avenue,"
or on a busy street in Brooklyn or the Bronx, when you go
with him to a restaurant or a concert, let him be surrounded
by people, his listeners, who greet him with a line from his
most popular songs:
"In a restaurant I've seen ...", or,
"Buy my cigarettes ..."
And people, demanding of him, ask him:
"Well, when will you play theatre? Robber, what is the limit
to your strike?"
The writer also asked him the line:
"Indeed, when? What is the limit of
your wandering around?"
Yablokoff answered -- and you can
believe him -- that he is ready to play tomorrow, but where
do you get a theatre now, when there is a great shortage of
buildings? On the "Avenue" most theatres are found in the
hand of one person, and the condition is such that only one
of the theatres can be "legitimate," and in order to obtain
the theatre, when it comes to taking it over, you have to
invest a lot of money ... in the theatre, instead of in the
"production."
One of the missions that R. Guskin,
manager of the Actors' Union, has entrusted Yablokoff with
is to help revive the remaining Yiddish actors in Poland
and, if possible, to consolidate the Yiddish theatre that
once flourished there. Yablokoff plans to perform there in a
couple of his most successful plays, to study them with the
local actors, and they will donate the offerings. He himself
will play for one week with each of the productions.
On the fourth of June he will, he
hopes, sit aboard the ship "Queen Elizabeth" and will travel
from England back home.
Every lover of Yiddish theatre will
wish Herman Yablokoff a happy trip, and he should bring joy
into the closed hearts of the Jewish population in Europe.
He will lift their spirits and strengthen their spirits --
for a Jew this is a big and rewarding job. Then Yablokoff
will return, and the local Jewish masses will receive him
with gratitude and with love, as he deserves.
 |
