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the role of "Vitskenea" in Sudermann's "Yohanes
feyern." Then for several months she was in Vienna,
where she performed under the name of "Natan". Later she acted
in Vienna's "Fraye yidishe folks-bine" in the operetta
troupe Kaminska-Breitman, and the "Vilna Troupe"
(director Mazo). For a while she played in the troupe,
in which her husband directed, together with Yosef
Kamien, where she showed herself to be an excellent
character actress. In the last years before the Second
World War, she played with her entire family in Zygmunt
Turkow's "VIKT."
Their children, Ida and
Misha Natan, also became Yiddish actors. Ida's husband,
Jacob Ginzburg, who also played on the Yiddish stage.
In his memoirs, Abraham
Morevski recalls that episode about her:
"Levental was a beautiful
actress. In "Nisoyen (Temptation)" (by Prager), she
played the "mother." The last act is one in which the
mother stands on the stage and responds to the strong
outrage of her son, which the Peretz hangmen torment in
their granary...
-- Dovid'l my Dovid'l--the
mother calls, she's squeezing her hands, pulling her
hair due to her disappointment. The Leventhal was an
actress full of heart and spunk. You must understand she
possessed a strong realistic lifestyle. She played her
scene brilliantly. But the director (David Herman)
wanted a "stone statue." Her profile faced the audience,
her hands spread out ,with a supple figure, holding back
a tear, silently, choking she said: "Dovid'l".. Herman
beat up on himself for weeks without end but nothing
came of it.
About the spectacle, it is
realized that the actress already dressed for the act
[in a crinoline, etc.] enters where a person has to
enter. The stage worker points to the curtain and nobody
is on the stage. Dovid'l screeches from the scenes ....
One, two, three ... What will it be?
People walk around the
wardrobe room: "Levental, gvald, where are you?
The curtain has long been lifted." She hears from a
special place the hidden gvaldn, which barely
shows, walking across the dark stage, to the opposite,
on the other side, to the right to make the crinoline,
and flies out on the stage, breaking hands, raising the
Lord with a whistle: "Dovid'l, my Dovid'l! My crown, my
life!". That she finished and went away behind the
curtain, she heard the stage directors' voices:
"Excellent! Farblvaft! So do every show!"
About her last stage and
tragic end, Jonas Turkow writes:
"When the Germans were in
Warsaw, the Natan family went away to the Ratnfarband.
Here they played in Lemberg's Jewish State
Theatre. ... When the Germans approached Lemberg, (her
husband Simkha) Natan (who was the manager of the
theatre), with the troupe was in Rovno (Volin). With him
was their son-in-law Jacob Ginzburg and the son Misha
Natan. Natan's wife, Naomi, with the daughter Ida, did
not appear to flee from Lemberg, and they remained there
with Ida's and Ginzburg's newly born child. For a lot of
money they succeeded in persuading them to go to Warsaw,
where, as they became aware, people were playing Yiddish
theatre. Naomi and Ida Natan were engaged in Warsaw's 'Eldorado'
(formerly the 'Skala' Theatre on Jelne Street), where
they performed with great success.
When the 'action'
began in Warsaw's ghetto, they joined in the 'shop,' of
actor Chaim Sandler, where they worked together with
other actors. Soon at the first 'action' the Germans
dragged off Ida Natan to the gas chamber in Treblinka.
Some time later therein Naomi Natan with her grandson."
Simkha Natan wandered across
Russia, in 1946 returned to Warsaw, and there several
months later passed away at his son-in-law Jacob
Ginzburg's home. Their son, Misha, survived and played
in Yiddish theatre in the Land of Israel.
-
"Lexicon of Yiddish
Theatre," Warsaw, Vol. II, 1934, p. 1397.
-
Jonas Turkow --
"Extinguished Stars," Buenos Aires, 1953, Vol.
I,
pp. 209-215.
-
Abraham Morevski -- "Ahin
un tsurik," Warsaw, 1963, Vol. 4, p. 296.
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