ERC > LEXICON OF THE YIDDISH THEATRE  >  VOLUME 5  >  ANNA SHERMAN


Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre
BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE WHO WERE ONCE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE;
aS FEATURED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S  "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"


VOLUME 5: THE KDOYSHIM (MARTYRS) EDITION, 1967, Mexico City

 

 

Anna Sherman
[Paperna]
 

Born in 1892 in Bobruisk, White Russia, into a family of prominence and of means. The grandfather, by whom she had been brought up, was a lumber merchant. Her father was a lawyer.

She attended the gymnasium in Poltava in the Ukraine, and in 1911 she married Jack Sherman in Libova. Here she participated as an amateur in Yiddish productions.

During the First World War she went away with her husband to Vilna, and in 1915 was among the co-founders of "FADA" (later the "Vilna Troupe"), where she played "Ettie" at the beginning of 1916 in Gordin's "Kreutzer Sonata."

When the Vilna Troupe traveled to Warsaw and Lodz, and when the German revolution broke out, Asro and Alomis separated from the troupe and returned to Vilna, where they organized a troupe that played until April 1919, when the Polish military left the city. Sh. participated in the troupe.

On 21 April 1919, there was murdered by the hands of the Polish soldiers, the playwright and dramatist A. Vinter.

About the story told by Avraham Morevsky in his memoirs:

"In Chana Sherman's breast the bullet remained stuck, which had made a hole in Vinter's head. This is what people in the town were saying. The bullet should have been taken out in the hospital by

 


'mshmrs kheloim,' and Sherman remained for everyone the symbol of our fair and beloved poet, cultural-doer and my adored friend."

At the start of 1920 Sh. went away to Berlin, and there she joined in the troupe that Asro had put together, under the patronage of a "Yiddish theatre society." She remained in Berlin and participated later in productions with Avraham Morevsky, who wrote about it:

"In four (scant) years she was associated with a loving man who was called Doctor Shpigelgas, and we were then in Berlin associated and linked by an intimate friendship. They had creates several productions that were organized by a man named Shidlover--my guest role in Leipzig and Chemnitz. We played "Shma Yisroel (Hear, O Israel)." Chana Sherman had acted in it."

In 1921 Sh. arrived in Riga and there joined in the Yiddish Meutim Theatre (under the leadership of Morevsky.)

Morevsky also noted that at times in Berlin she turned to him, that he should give her protection, that she should receive an understudy role in a motion picture.

Sh. later made her home in Riga, where from time to time she used to play Yiddish theatre and often performed in literary evenings and concerts.

As Yona Radinov writes, she was killed during the first Action in the Riga ghetto on 30 November 1941, when more than seventeen thousand Jews: women, children and the elderly were taken away on a frosty, snowy Sunday to the Rumbula Forest, where she, as well as them, were mercilessly destroyed by the Nazis.
 

Sh. E. and Sh. E. by Yona Radinov.

  • Avraham Morevsky-- "Ahin un tsurik," Warsaw, 1963, Volume Four, pp. 165-166, 181-182, 260-261.

 

 

 

 


 

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Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the  "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 5, page 4040.
 

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