VIDEO: Avrom Karpinovitch, Writer, Remembers Jewish Criminals In Vilna
By Forverts Staff December 18, 2017
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts.
Vilna writer Avrom Karpinovitch dedicated his life to describing the colorful personalities of the lower class and criminal element of his city on the eve of the Holocaust.
In this video he tells us about Tall Tamara, the Jewish streetwalker; Avrom Mosevski, the glutton; and Gedalke the Mad Cantor, who used to sing Jewish melodies into a teakettle to preserve them till Passover.
“The Vilna Gaon will be written about, researched and dissertated, and Dr. Max Weinreich is immortalized in the history of the Yiddish language,” Karpinovich says. “But what about Tall Tamara, who stood up to the Nazis at the extermination pit in Ponar? She expressed her dissent by being the only one not to take off her clothes. The Nazis murdered her still wearing her dress. That was the only protest she could express. With that one act she rescued the honor of all Jewish women. Why should Tamara be forgotten?‟
This documentary is one of ten in which acclaimed Yiddish writers of the pre-war generation speak openly about their lives. The films, in Yiddish with English subtitles, were directed by award-winning writer and former Forverts editor Boris Sandler and produced through the Forward Association as a DVD series called “Monologues of Yiddish Writers”.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
