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According to Jonas Turkow, M. came from an intelligent
but assimilated home in Warsaw, that became poor and
therefore had to search for income, and through her
friend, the actress Roza Gazel, she became excited about
being a chorister in a Yiddish theatre. When she learned
Yiddish, she also began to receive small roles in which
she did not exhibit any great talent, but as a person
she was very ideal. Kerman, her husband, loved her until
[he was] crazy.
The former actor Severin
Zwerling recalls that M. was a tall, slender person, very
lovely with black, torrid eyes. Sometimes when they were going to Lemberg,
through the streets and speaking Yiddish, he was blocked
by his wife who dared him to say that that beautiful
woman wasn't lovely, who was passing through the
streets and speaking Yiddish.
In "Extinguished Stars,"
Jonas Turkow writes that after the actor Pesakh Kerman
divorced his first wife, with whom he wasn't happy with,
for the second time married a lovely Yiddish chorister
who later became an actress: Hela Mel (Melman). And with
her he led a happy life. During the last years of the
Second World War, she acted together with various
troupes. M. acted with Zygmunt Turkow in Warsaw's "Noveshtshi"
Theatre in "In-Laws," and later with the "Yidisher
natsionaler bine." When the war broke out, M. with her
husband fled from Warsaw to Bialystok, and from there to
Lemberg. Here they worked in the local State Yiddish
Theatre, but when a part of the troupe went away to
guest-star in Rovno, Pesakh Kremer traveled with her,
but his wife continued with the other part of the Nazis.
She and Fela Rotstein (the wife of Grisha Rotstein) had,
during the "action" in Lemberg's ghetto resided in a
chimney. The Germans had them, but also found them there
and dragged them to their death.
The actor Sheftl Zak tells
that he had read somewhere that a Pole had observed that
she had hidden together with Pepi Urich in a chimney,
and had pointed out them to the Germans.
M. E. from
Severin Zwerling.
Sh. E. from
Sheftel Zak and from Jonas Turkow.
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Jonas Turkow -- "Extinguished
Stars", Buenos Aires, 1953, Vol. II, pp. 74, 83,
87.
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