From Avant-garde to Art: Yiddish Theatre in Paris between 1944-49

• In Event: Yiddish Culture in Post-Holocaust Paris, 1944-1954

Abstract

This paper will examine the reconstruction of Yiddish theatre in Paris during the immediate post-World War II period to evaluate how proponents of Parisian Yiddish culture tried to rebuild their lost interwar French and Jewish community. Catalyzed by both Paris' position as the European city to which many Jews whose lives were shattered by the Holocaust travelled and the estimated 180,000 Jews that remained in France by 1946, Paris gives us a unique entry point into evaluating how this transnational cultural and national community reimagined itself as an immediate response to war and genocide. By focusing on the reemergence of the interwar theatre troupe the Parizer yidisher avangarde teater (PYAT; 1934-1944) in 1944 and their transformation into the troupe Yidisher kunst teater (YKUT; 1944-1949), this paper will seek to understand how Jews in France sought to reconstruct the lively and diverse interwar Yiddish world in the wake of the total destruction of their Parisian and larger European Jewish worlds. By paying close attention to changes in aesthetics, repertoire, and reception, I examine how Parisian Yiddishists made their "amateur" theatre align more closely with notions of "professionalism" prevalent during the early Fourth Republic.

Author

• Nicholas Underwood, University of Colorado, Boulder