A festival devoted to Warsaw’s pre-war Yiddish culture is taking place now in the Polish capital. The 8th annual Singer’s Warsaw festival of Jewish Culture (Warszawa Singera) runs from August 27 to September 4 and includes literature, music, theater, art, lectures and an assortment of participants aiming to evoke the atmosphere of Warsaw’s massive pre-war Yiddish-speaking population.
Before the war there were almost 400,000 Jews in Warsaw, accounting for about 30% of the city’s population. It was the second largest Jewish community in the world after New York City.
Literary guests at this year’s festival include Jewish-Austrian writer Frederic Morton, who emigrated to the US in 1940 and has written classic accounts of late-Hapsburg Vienna, A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888-1889 and Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914 among many other works and journalism. Also present is renowned Polish-Jewish writer and journalist Hanna Krall, whose survival through the Holocaust plays a major role in her writing.
The festival is otherwise filled with concerts – from klezmer and tango to classical, workshops for both adults and children on subjects such as Hebrew manuscripts and Jewish fairy tales, as well as theatrical performances. Singer’s play “Taibele and Her Demon” is getting its Polish premiere by the State Jewish Theatre in Bucharest.
For more on the festival click here …
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