Avrahamele Bozyk

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

Avrahamele Bozyk

Born on 1 April 1923 in Warsaw, Poland. Parents -- the Yiddish actors Reyzel and Max Bozyk. Learned in a cheder and in a folkshul. At age five he acted in Yiddish theatre across the Polish province, then in Warsaw with the guest-starring Jacob Silbert from America in the play "Brodyago." B. even farshtreykt until he had diversified his hire (?). His last children's role was in Alter Katsizne's play "Dos gevisn fun der velt."

Avrahamale possessed a natural humor that was seen in several of his "khkhmus." When he was seven years old, the theatre director Meir Winder told him that he would be better off if he became a good tailor. On the question of why, he answered: "So I will be a good actor, I will have many jobs, and that [as] I will be a good actor, like my father, I will have many enemies."

When he acted in the "Skala" Theatre in Urke Nachalnik's play "Din torah" and had not been wanted in the theatre; he had vegn dem apelirt to main roles and legitimized himself, and when that had him, it was remarked that "the play is not for children, he soon thereof had responded "and I had heart that the play is also not for large (people)."

In the beginning of 1939, his parents were engaged for several months, where they guest-starred in Argentina with the oysrekhenung, and soon thereafter they returned home to Warsaw to their sixteen-year-old son, together with their grandmother the actress Leah Levibarovska. [see "Kidushim Band", from "Lexicon", pp. 4065-66]. They had arrived in

Argentina on the day that Hitler invaded Poland. They were cut off from contact with their home. Instead they traveled back to Poland, which had already been captured by Hitler's army and where the destruction of Jewish life had already begun. In September 1941, they traveled to America, where they were engaged by the actor Herman Yablokoff.

Every year, they stayed in America, where they brought their daughter Zisele. They had sought to keep track of her in Warsaw, where they had left had left their son against whom it was bavust that he was taken away by the Nazis together with all the members of both families.

According to the journalist Y. Shmulevitsh, the parents had, while acting in 1966 in Montreal (Canada), met Fabian Shtrouber from Potok-Zloty, Poland, who told them that he had seen a German assassin shoot their son. He had seen this himself that the murder was committed by the German Schmidt against which he indeed performed the process, which is against the murderers occurred(?) in Darmstadt, Western Germany.

According to a protocol of the trial, the witness Fabian Shtrouber said that in the summer of 1942 the Nazis brought him from Przemysl to Dembo, where there was a Nazi labor and purification(?) camp. There in the woods, around 600 Jews worked as slaves. The commandant of the camp was the accused big shot at the time, who had in a sadistic way tormented the Jews. A second accused in the process was the Nazi Schmidt, a fanatic, who thought that tormenting and murdering Jews was a sacred thing for the German people. Shtrober had related that the process that Schmidt used to, by his own hand, shoot the sick Jews in the camp, and he also saw Schmidt shoot Avrahamele, Bozyk's son. Avrahamele had gone into the village, looking for bread. Nazi guards caught him and brought him to Schmidt. He commanded Avrahamele to avektsuleygen the ground, in a kind of bunker, where he had to lay for an entire night and tsumorgns in the early...., when they forced him to work, and Schmidt had, by himself, shot him.

That is how his parents caught on to the tragic end of their son.

Sh. E. from Max Bozyk.

Y. Shmulevitsh -- Tate-mame veysen shoyn itst vegn gurl fun zeyer zuhn, "Forward", N. Y., 14 February 1967.

Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 6, page 5053.