Lives in the Yiddish Theatre
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"

1931-1969
 

Adolf Berman

B. was born on 27 November 1872 in Warsaw, Poland. His father was a tailor. He completed a Sunday trade school, and as a youth he sang in the Tlomatsker choral school, and from there Goldfaden had him and Tantzman taken into the children's chorus in the Eldorado Theatre. In 1892 together with Mitelman, Liebert, Kaminski, Ester Rokhl Kaminska, Rotshteyn and Zilberberg, he began to act on the Yiddish stage in Warsaw with the Russian director Olginska. B.'s first performance was as "Komisar" in "Koldunye." In 1894 B. toured with Shliferstein. In 1898 he joined as a [reziner] in the troupe, in which his brother Herman had partnered with Kaminski. In 1900, when Yiddish theatre was forbidden, B. toured with Yiddish actors in Russian and German quartets, until he was taken into in 1905 the Warsaw Bagatela Theatre. In 1908 B. was engaged to Zandberg in Lodz's Grand Theatre, where he acted for several years and there directed for the first time in Europe Gordin's "Elisha ben Abuyah." In 1913 B. acted with Clara Young in Warsaw, and then in a European operetta repertoire  with Neroslavska. In wartime B. found, together with Rotshteyn and Fiszelewicz a Yiddish theatre in Warsaw on Tvarda 7, where he also came to act -- due to the ban on Yiddish theatre -- Yiddish plays in Polish. After the war B. acted for a certain time with Ester Rokhl Kaminska, then in "Sambatyon," a revue theatre, and toured across Poland with a troupe of which he was the initiator.

B. also had participated in the film "Di farshtoysene tokhter (The Outcast Daughter)?," [1915], "Der vilder foter (The Harsh Father)" by Libin, and "Tkies-khaf (The Vow)."

 



Sh.E.

  • M. Myodovnik -- Teater zikhroynes, "Shtern," Minsk, 2, 1, 1926.


 

 

 

 


 

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Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the  "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 1, page 204.

You can read Adolf's later biography in Vol. 5 of the "Lexicon."
 

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