Born in 1894 in Magerov, Galicia, to religious parents, small dealers. As a child he learned in cheders. Later in a kloyz. He sung part-time with cantors. He became an employee in Lemberg. During the First World War he fell into Siberia and Russian captivity, and there in 1916 he began to act in Yiddish theatre with prisoners-of-war. He says:

"Being in Rozgalnaya, by Vladivostok, we were in a camp together with several thousand people from the Austrian-Hungarian, German and Turkish armies. Under these there were approximately five hundred Jews from the aforementioned lands. The largest part were formed by Galician prisoners, among them many musicians who later became famous. Besides this, we were many theatre amateurs-singers and several young artists, the most active of whom was Israel Rosenberg, a character-comic and art painter. The latter, seeing that the Germans had organized a choir of forty men, among whom I, as a Jew, sang, Rosenberg came up with the idea that we Jews can and should not remain silent (we had equal rights there). In the camp there was a beautiful hall with a stage, a Beit HaMedrash, and excuse the comparison, a church. We selected the theatre hall, which was built during the Russian-Japanese War. We repaired the remaining decorations in our spare time. Rosenberg helped a little and began to assemble an ensemble for "Hinke pinke." The ensemble consisted of mere men, because in our kingdom of men, there were no women. Somewhere in our barracks there were three old Turkish women, but we still didn't know how to use them.

So, the operetta was composed with outside music, [that] a certain Feuerman took up. I became  the lover Gabriel, Rosenberg the comedian. A nice guy, a certain Tornheim played Dinah, because he looked like a girl, and he sang quite well. That's how all the roles were distributed. The play was censored by a Russian officer, Chief Wilhelm of the nation, a German. We studied the play, rehearsed it, and it worked.

To the performance (came) prisoners, without exception of religion. as they entered the large enough hall. A lot of Russian officers came. The production took off. Then then played, "Di Bobe Yakhne" by Goldfaden.  The audience and me among them had a moment of spirituality (spiritual enjoyment). The Russian officers did not stop the performance. The Reich Germans said, "We were thoroughly amused by her performance."

However, he made a case with the Reich Germans because of which we all suffered. The latter saw around them that they too possessed artistic powers ... and began to prepare for a performance. Chief Wilhelm censored their play, and they played. After the second act, the curtain was no longer allowed to be raised. The Germans performed their patriotic, unsuccessful production with lazy jokes, and not the censored one. On the next day, the captain divided them accordingly. The regisseur received seven days of arrest, and the actors who had the largest of the roles got two to five days. As the Germans interfered, it didn't work. Our Yiddish theatre, because of them, also was banned. At the end of 1916 we were sent away, closer to Russia, to Ufa. There we founded a dramatic circle, together with the local youths, with the free artistic brothers Skotshev, the city rabbi's son-in-law Mr. Schlitzan, a merchant, a blind man who played the banker in the play, "Der Amerikaner arbeter (The American Worker)."  There the city public were our attendees. The tickets were sold, we performed may plays, among them also was Sholem Aleichem's comedies. Traveling actors, such as Sonia Brown and Schorr (I can't remember his first name), applied to our circle and played together with us. And there were other itinerant actors, among them Ruinsky, a Christian. So we played until after the Revolution. Later, in 1918, several of us prisoners-of-war arrived in Samara and also there, with a part of the local actors, played for the city audience until they gave us the possibility of the ability to travel everywhere according to their wishes."

(Also the writer Alter Eisenshloss tells us in his memoirs [published in "Theatre Memoirs," edited by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Vilna, 1928, pages 11-26), as he had in 1916, in the Lindenberg prisoner camp, ..., established a theatre group that played in Yiddish.

The actor Joseph Khash recalls in his biography (Volume 1, "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre," New York, 1931, 798 pages), how he arranged during the First World War, as a prisoner of war in the Austrian prison camp Klein-München, near Linz, organized theatre performances in Russian, Polish, and especially in Yiddish. The productions were well attended by the prisoners-of-war, and by the local officers. Thus the women's roles were played by men. Thus he played "Esterke" in Gordin's "Di skhithe (The Slaughter)," and "Khasye," in Gordin's "Khasye di yesoyme (Chasia the Orphan.")

He was married in Samara, and with his wife later traveled to her home city of Riga, where in the beginning he played Yiddish theatre with Y. Rakov's itinerant troupe across the province, and then in the local theatre, where his two children, Dora and Yasha, also participated in children's roles.

His further fate is unknown.

Sh.E.

• "Lexicon of Yiddish Theatre," Volume 1, New York, 1931, pages 53-54, 798.