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Photos: (above) Chayela Rosenthal courtesy of Naava Piatka;
(inset) Naava Piatka by Alan Ritter
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Thursday, May 30, 7 p.m.
Friday, May 31, 1 p.m.
By Naava Piatka
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As a teenager, Chayela Rosenthal resided in the Vilna (Wilno) ghetto in Poland. She joined the ghetto theater as a Yiddish singer, actress, and comedienne. Ghetto performers and producers created the theater to entertain and uplift their audience, whom the Nazi authorities had forced into the cramped, dismal conditions of the ghetto. Known as the “Wunderkind of the Vilna Ghetto,” Chayela sang a song entitled Yisrolik, which is a ballad about a tough, but sentimental child entrepreneur in the ghetto. In her own life she took to heart Yisrolik’s admonition “not to speak of sadness,” and she never spoke to her own children about her wartime experiences.
Through the original songs that make up this piece of musical theater, Chayela’s daughter, Naava Piatka, discovers unexplored dimensions of her mother’s life. She expresses the essence of their relationship by playing both mother and daughter, and by using the very art form passed down to her as a tribute to Jewish survival.
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The Museum's performing arts series is made possible by a grant from The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.
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