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Ida Kamińska
Ida Kamińska was born in 1899 in Odessa, the daughter of Abraham Izaak and Rachel Ester Kamiński. She died in New York in 1980. She was a well-known actress and the first woman director in interwar Poland. She was the wife of Zygmunt Turkow. She had been linked to the theater since childhood, when she began her career at her parents' side. Together with Turkow, she later founded the Varshaver Yidisher Kunst-Teater (VIKT). This theater was disbanded, however, and the troupe performed in the provinces; later, it toured in Belgium and France. At that time, Ida Kamińska headed the Kamiński Family Theater as its co-owner. There, she organized an alternative group (1934-1939) that performed in Warsaw. She had a talent for organization - thanks to her, for example, the J. Gordin Art Festival was able to take place. In 1938, she took over the Teatr Nowości (Novelty Theater) in Warsaw, where she signed a contract for a period of five years. Like her mother, she also appeared in Yiddish films. After the start of the Second World War, she worked in the State Jewish Theater in Lwów (Lviv). By the spring of 1940, however, the Soviet authorities "suggested" that she quit as director. In June 1941, she fled to the east, where she continued her activities. She worked in the theater in Frunze (Kirghizia), and founded a Jewish theater group that performed throughout Soviet Central Asia.
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After she returned to Poland in 1947, she worked in Jewish theaters, including those in Łódź and Wrocław. In 1955, she took over as the director of the Jewish State Theater in Warsaw, named after her mother. The theater became well-respected and famous thanks to its numerous foreign tours (France, England, Belgium, Holland, East Germany and North and South America). Kamińska also acted in several films. It is worth recalling that in 1967, she was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress in the Czechoslovak film The Shop on Main Street, which received the Academy award for best foreign film that year. In August 1968, because of the growing state-sponsored anti-Semitism, she immigrated to the United States, where she soon tried to found the Yiddish Theater with the help of the Friends of Ida Kamińska Association. These efforts, however, failed, and her unrealized plans to create a Yiddish theater in the States left her with the bitter realization that what had been possible in the Soviet republics during the Second World War had proved impossible in a free country. During her career, Kamińska wrote two plays and translated 58 into Yiddish. She also directed 65 productions and played in 124 roles. She published her memoirs, titled My Life, My Theater (New York, 1973), which also appeared in Polish translation as Moje życie, mój teatr (Warsaw, 1995). (asw)
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