New York—Among the hundreds of people who came to Gracie Mansion to celebrate Jewish Heritage Month were leading lights of Yiddish theatre in America. Seated at a small table at the packed event were internationally known actor and singer Theodore Bikel, Zalman Mlotek, Artistic Director of The National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene (and Teaneck resident) and Bryna Wasserman, the theater’s Executive Director, also a North Jersey resident.

They spoke with JLBC about Bikel’s planned concert in Vienna to commemorate the 75^th Anniversary of Krystallnacht this coming November, and about the future of Yiddish theatre, generally.

Krystallnacht, the night of November 9-10, 1938, was the night when thousands of Jewish shops had their windows broken in an act of government-sanctioned violence. It is considered by many to be the official opening act of the Holocaust. The violence occurred in both Germany and Austria.

Seventy five years later, Jews have returned to Berlin and Vienna. About 15,000, mainly immigrants from the FSU, live in Austria, most in Vienna. In 2013, with the rise of the Austrian far right, anti-Semitism is on the rise there again. According to the IKG, the official umbrella organization of the Jewish community, anti-Semitic incidents have doubled during the last year to 135.

In this highly charged atmosphere, Vienna-born, Academy-Award nominee Theodore Bikel (for his role as the sheriff in The Defiant Ones) and 2009 recipient of the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art November 15, 2009 , will travel to Vienna to offer a special performance in commemoration of that terrifying night so many years ago. (Bikel is also chairman of the board of Meretz, USA.)

Born in 1923, Bikel was raised in a Zionist, Yiddish-speaking home. He was 13 when he and his family immigrated to then-Palestine. JLBC asked him, “How do you think you will feel when you return to Austria for the Krystallnacht commemoration?”

“It’s a complicated question,” Bikel responded. “I’m not going to sing to the entire Austrian people anyway. Most of the audience will be Jews.”

Will he sing songs of triumph or of sadness? Bikel answered with solid conviction, “I sing of life, of hope, of the fact that I am still here and they are not.”

Seated with Bikel were Zalmen Mlotek, Artistic Director of the National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene and the theater’s Executive Director, Bryna Wasserman. Wasserman, who was headed the Yiddish theatre in Montreal before coming to New York, recalled performances by the Montreal Yiddish Theater in Vienna. “It was,” she said, “a dafkeh tour—dafkeh, because I’m still around.” (Dafkeh can be loosely translated “in spite of”—and in your face.)

Wasserman continued: “We all have super emotional times. The decision to perform or even go back is very personal. It is very complex and emotional. The only thing I have learned is that we can’t make those decisions for others…It’s a difficult process. When you come to terms with it, you say dafkeh. We have to show our survival in spite of everything. Even in the Ghetto, there was theater. Theater was the light, and in some ways, the hope. We have to carry the torch—to work even harder because of the memory of the atrocities.”

JLBC asked Wasserman how she felt about the Jewish “renaissance” in Europe. “Poland is at least making efforts. Vienna is still in denial. They still feel they were wronged.”

“On the other hand,” said Mlotek, “The Folksbiene is burgeoning. There is a resurgence of interest in Yiddish theater across the generations. Future projects with Teddy, an icon of Jewish music and culture, are underway. There are discussions of tours to Warsaw and Moscow.”

The Folksbiene Annual Gala Concert is scheduled for June 10 at the Skirball Center at NYU and the honoree is Morris W. Offit. The program will star Joel Grey and Tom Brokaw with performances by Eleanor Reissa, Joanne Bortz, Elmore James and Frank London’s Klezmer AllStars, along with a host of other performers and the Folksbiene Troupe.

“The Gala keeps us alive,” said Mlotek. “It’s the oxygen we need in order to continue our work. This will be a concert never heard before and never to be heard again.” The theatre is also in the midst of planning its 100^th anniversary in 2015.

For more information on the Gala and the 100th anniversary of the theater, visit www.folksbiene.org.

By Maxine Dovere