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. |
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