Misha Fishzon writes in his memoirs:
He was a charming actor, not greatly talented, but
loved the stage. He could also paint a bit. Before
he joined our troupe (in Rumania) he worked as an
associate director; worked like a horse earning
nothing but problems.
A.S.’ wife, Polia, first a chorus singer, later an
actress, died in Israel in 1963. Their daughter,
Chayele Ash, married to the actor Ari Fuhrman,
survived, lived in Philadelphia, where they
performed Yiddish theatre and organized Yiddish
concerts.
Chayele Ash says the following about her father:
In the early 1920’s Misha Fishzon and Viera
Zaslavska came to Kishinev as guest performers along
with a splendid repertory, creating a theatre called
“Yevreyski Experimental Theatre”. At that time, my
father was considered one of the most important
elements in this kind of theatre. He was a proponent
of better repertories for which he fought for
years. If a director wanted to contract him to a
particular star, his first question was about the
kind of repertoire that star used in his guest
performances. He was a splendid painter and because
of that he was positioned as one of the best
associate directors. He was a good character actor
and because of his artistic talent with stage makeup
he could also play a variety of personalities (even
several within the same production) and was one of
the only people (of that time) who could create
sketches and scale models of the most complicated
stage scenery. Directors virtually fought over
him. The guest performers who would come in for
cameo performances used to make sure their contracts
specified that Avraham Ash had to be contracted for
that production. He always attracted a good
camaraderie of actors and a good repertory. That’s
why he was the darling of the common people who were
the main viewers of Yiddish theatre in Rumania.
His daughter recounts a list of his roles: (In the
Vilna Troupe): “Tzingetang” in “Shulamit”, “Eliezer”
in “Akeyda yitzhak” (The Sacrifice of Isaac), “the
man in the skullcap” in Peretz’ “Dray matones”
(Three Gifts); (in Fishzon-Zoslavska ensemble):
“the lawyer” in Tolstoy’s “Tikhiyes hameysim” (The
Resurrection), “the messenger” in “Dibuk” (The
Dybbuk), “Bobtchinski” or “Dobtchinski” in
“Revizor” (The Inspector General); ( Molly Picon-Kalish
ensemble), “the banker” in “Tzipke fayer” (Lively
Tzipke); (Moshe Lipman ensemble), “the priest” in
“Di zibn gehongene” (The Seven Who Were Hanged), and
when Shloyme Pryzament created a small arts theatre
in Rumania along the lines of the Polish-Yiddish “Azazel”,
her father developed the roles in “Bontshe shvayg”
(Bontshe the Silent), “the duke”, and “the crazy
one” in Peretz’s “In polish af der keyt” (“Arrested
and Detained at the Synagogue”), played “Motke” in
“Motke ganef “(Motke the Thief) throughout the
province, “Uriel mazik” (Uriel the rascal) in “Got,
mentsh, un tayvl” (God, Man, and the Devil), “the
miller” in “A farvorfn vinkl” (A Remote Corner), and
“director” in “Gvald, ven shtarbt er” (Help, When
Will He Die?)
In 1937, A. toured across Czechoslovakia with the
Ziegler troupe in operettas and melodramas; after
that he worked with Moshe Lipman, where he played
“Moshe khasid” (Moshe the Chasid) and four more
serial roles in “Yoshe kalb”. When the Hitler army
marched into Czechoslovakia in 1938, the troupe
disbanded and A. went back to Kishinev. Because of
reigning anti-Semitism there at the time, it was
impossible to put on Yiddish theatre, especially in
Kishinev. Playing in restaurants and teahouses had
to suffice. 1939 – Contracted to Kishinev and
performed there until 1940 when the Soviet power
took over Bukovina and Bessarabia.
Learning that there was a new Yiddish state theatre
being created in Kishinev, he went back there again.
The first performance of the Moldavian Yiddish State
Theatre was (symbolically) “Di kishufmakherin” (The
Sorceress) by Avraham Goldfaden, directed by Abelev
(director from the Odessa Kharkov Theatre). Avraham
Ash performed in “Bobe yakhne (Grandma Yakhne)” with
exceptional success. Zuskin the actor and Pulver,
the conductor (and composer) of the Moscow Yiddish
State Theatre personally came to see the great
success of the production. All the newspapers
featured pictures of Ash in makeup as “the
sorceress” along with the two artists mentioned
above, showering him with the highest praise for his
creation.
In 1941 when the Second World War broke out (in
Russia), the state theatre moved to Tiraspol. But
the Germans got close to that location too. In one
of the bombardments, we were loaded into locked
wagons, like beasts, with the destination of
Kuybyshev to where the Moldavian government had been
evacuated. In all the disarray, my father was
separated from us. It was not until 1943 that we (my
mother and I) found out that he was no longer
alive. We were told very briefly that he lay along
with fifty other men in a grave which had been
covered with lime (on account of the raging
epidemic) so that no trace of it remained. They also
told us how he looked the last day before his
death. I wanted to imagine it but I couldn’t. That
makeup, Avraham Ash’s last stage makeup, could only
have been created by gruesome death itself,
inflicted by the Nazi murderers.
Sh.E. -- by his daughter Chayele Ash-Fuhrman and
by Iacov Yakubovitsh.
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