Israel Kompaneyets

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Lives in the Yiddish Theatre

SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE YIDDISH THEATRE
AS DESCRIBED IN ZALMEN ZYLBERCWEIG'S "LEXICON OF THE YIDDISH THEATRE"

1931-1969

Israel Kompaneyets

K. was born in 1900 in Feodosiya in the Crimea. His parents were the theatre veterans Aba and Leah Kompaneyets. He was educated within the environment of the theatre, and he had from his early youth participated in Yiddish theatre as a performer, especially in the troupes of his parents. He had the same wandering ways as them, until he had made Paris his place of rest.

K. was married to Mania Plater (born in Rovne), a sister of his brother Max's wife Sonia, who also had participated in Yiddish theatre.

During the German Occupation in 1942,and a day earlier through an "action," his two brothers fled because they didn't believe that they would also be deporting women and children (Oskar, twelve and-a-half years old, and Kheymele, seven-and-a-half years old), and on 16 June 1942 they were deported to Drancy. His brother Max (his biography is seen in the fourth volume of "Lexicon of the Yiddish

Theatre," p. 2685), who had served in French military control, and as a prisoner-of-war spent ten months in Germany and from there, ill, he was sent to Paris. On 15 July 1942 together with K. he escaped into the so-called "free zone." K. later was captured by the Nazis in Lyon, and shortly before Liberation was brought to Drancy, and afterwards from here was sent away to a killing place from which no one returned. His wife and children also had the same fate.

M. E. and Sh. E. from his sister Anita Paliakov-Kompaneyets.