Forward Looking Back
A Lady on Stage: Yiddish actor Mischa German as he appeared in the role of ‘Shprintse di Meklerin’ [Shprintse the Broker] in the comedy ‘Kokete Damen’ [Vamps]. The four-act play typically features men in drag and was written by the trendy Yiddish pop culture novelist and playwright known to his masses of fans simply as Shomer. Image by Forward Association
1916 100 Years Ago
The Forward Association has decided to publish a larger Sunday edition than usual. It will contain twice as much reading material as a weekday Forverts, which costs 1 cent. The reading public has more time to read on Sunday and has demanded more. As a result, we have decided to provide them with more. The English-language Sunday newspapers cost 5 cents. Our new, expanded edition will cost only 2 cents. The new edition will contain a large amount of serious academic articles, as well as articles on daily life along with material that will make readers laugh. There will be a great deal of material that will educate readers, much that will be of interest to them and lots to amuse. Each Sunday edition will have a humor page with rich content. The main thing will be to learn and to laugh.
1941 75 Years Ago
According to Dziennik Polski, the Polish national newspaper in exile, the Nazi rulers of Warsaw have given an order that forbids Jews from moving from one apartment to another in the ghetto to which they are restricted without permission from the occupying government. If Jews are caught moving house, they will be punished with three months of hard labor and a fine of 3,000 zlotys for each person involved. A special Nazi court sentenced 17 Jews and Poles with two to seven months of hard labor for smuggling food into the ghetto. Because food smuggling is so prevalent, the Nazis have ordered that Poles caught helping Jews smuggle food into the ghetto through the ghetto gates or walls be fined thousands of zlotys and sentenced to three months of hard labor; those between the ages of 14 and 21 will be sent to labor camps.
1966 50 Years Ago
At the United Nations, an all-day tribunal sponsored by New York’s Carnegie Foundation described the horrific conditions under which Soviet Jewry is forced to live. Well-known civil rights leader Bayard Rustin chaired the tribunal. Other participants included socialist Norman Thomas, Telford Taylor, former prosecutor of the Nuremburg Trials, and the well-known author Lionel Trilling. Moshe Decter, an expert on Soviet Jewry, provided a report on the current condition of Soviet Jews. Among the matters discussed by Decter were details regarding the official Soviet campaign to mock and minimize Jewish holidays in order to push Jews to assimilate. One result of recent outside pressure on the Soviet government is that Jews in some cities were permitted to bake matzos last year.
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