Theo Bikel To Be Honored By Austria On Anniversary of Kristallnacht
Image by Wikicommons
Theodore Bikel, who fled the Nazi occupation of his native Vienna for prestate Israel, will be honored by the Austrian government on the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
On Thursday, Bikel, 89, will accept the country’s highest honor in the arts before giving an hourlong concert of mainly Yiddish songs interspersed with a few numbers in English and German.
High-ranking Austrian government and cultural leaders are scheduled to attend the commemoration of Kristallnacht, the November 1938 pogrom in Germany and Austria.
For the finale, Bikel will present the “Song of the Partisans” in Yiddish, and will ask the audience to rise as he renders the powerful words and notes of the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II, he told the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.
“The Nazi criminals are gone, I am still here,” he said during an interview in his West Los Angeles home.
“I think I was created for this occasion,” Bikel added, referring to the Vienna commemoration.
Bikel, who gained fame as Tevye in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” is producing and starring in the documentary film “Theodore Bikel in the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem.”
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.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
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 the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
