|
Misha Fiszon writes in his memoirs:
He was a charming actor, not greatly talented, but
he loved the stage. He could also paint a bit. Before
he joined our troupe (in Romania) he worked as an
associate director; worked like a horse, earning
nothing but problems.
Ash's wife, Polia, who first was a chorus singer, then
later an
actress, died in Israel in 1963. Their daughter,
Khayele Ash, who is 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 Fiszon and Vera
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 Romania.
His daughter recounts a list of his roles: (In the
Vilna Troupe): “Tzingetang” in “Shulamis," “Eliezer”
in “The Sacrifice of Isaac," “the
Man in the Skullcap” in Peretz’s “Three Gifts." In Fiszon-Zaslavska
nsemble he played
“the Lawyer” in Tolstoy’s “The
Resurrection," “the Messenger” in “The
Dybbuk," “Bobchinski” or “Dobtchinski” in
“The Inspector General." In the Molly Picon-Kalich
ensemble he played “the Banker” in “Lively Tzipke."
In the Moshe Lipman ensemble he played “the priest” in
“The Seven Who Were Hanged," and
when Shloime Prizament created a small arts theatre
in Romania along the lines of the Polish-Yiddish “Azazel,”
her father developed the roles in “Bontshe the
Silent," “the Duke” and “the Crazy
One” in Peretz’s “In polish oyf der keyt” (“Arrested
and Detained at the Synagogue,”) played “Motke” in
“Motke the Thief" throughout the
province, “Uriel mazik” in “God, Man, and Devil," “the
Miller” in “A Faraway Corner," and the
“Director” in “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 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
the 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. In 1939 he was contracted to Kishinev and
performed there until 1940, when the Soviet forces
took over Bukovina and Bessarabia.
Learning that there was a new Jewish state theatre
being created in Kishinev, he went back there again.
The first performance of the Moldavian Jewish 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 Jewish
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 that 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 Khayele Ash-Fuhrman and
by Iacov Yakubovitsh.
|
