Guide to the Records of the Yidisher Artistn Fareyn (Yiddish Actors' Union), 1909-1940

The Yidisher Artistn Fareyn (Yiddish Actors' Union or YAF), also known as the Zwiazek Artystow Scen Zydowskich (ZASZ), located in Warsaw, Poland, was founded in 1919, and existed until the beginning of WWII (September 1939). Its primary purpose was to represent the interests of actors in their financial negotiations with directors of theaters and theatrical troupes. However, its role went beyond that, as it involved itself in politics, supporting greater autonomy for Polish Jews, and in cultural life, as it attempted to support the development of a professional, artistically ambitious Polish Jewish theater. In fact these goals were connected: demonstrating the advancement of Jewish culture was thought to buttress Jewish claims for greater political freedom.

Several attempts were made to establish an actors' union in the 1910s in different cities in Poland, beginning in 1915 in Lodz. The German occupation of Poland during and after WWI provided Polish Jews, and the Yiddish theater in particular, with unprecedented freedom. Whereas under the Russia Czar, permits to perform Yiddish plays were rarely granted and frequently revoked, the German occupation authorities, eager to undermine Russification, allowed ethnic minorities including Jews to freely participate in cultural life. Following WWI, it took some years for refugees who had fled to return to Warsaw, but when a critical mass of actors and activists was reached, in 1919, the Yidisher Artistn Fareyn took shape.

In the early years of its existence, the YAF struggled to exert influence over the energetic but chaotic blossoming of the Yiddish theatrical scene in Poland. New theatrical companies would be established and then disappear, and rifts emerged particularly between actors affiliated with permanent theaters and those that toured the provinces, sometimes only for a single season. They also ironically struggled with the greater freedoms allowed Yiddish theaters and actors: if they called a strike, there was no reason directors could not simply hire actors unaffiliated with the union, and many did exactly that, limiting the YAF's ability to create meaningful change.

In 1925, the YAF affiliated itself with the Landrat, or the National Council of Class Trade Unions (Krajowa Rada Klasowych Związków Zawodowych). This connected them with unions in other professions, broadening their ability to enforce internal discipline and amplifying their voice on the Polish political stage.

The YAF conducted extensive activities aside from bargaining with directors and political activism. As part of its general financial support of retired, ill, and unemployed actors, it provided a stipend to actors who wished to send their children to school. In 1925, they decided to limit this stipend to those who sent their children to Yiddish-language schools, thus buttressing Yiddish education in Poland. They also published their own journals (Yidish teater and Yidishe bine, among others) and amassed one of the most impressive libraries among the Warsaw trade unions. They held lectures on the history of Yiddish theater, and became involved in education, training young actors and providing certification for experienced actors. Its membership grew to include over 300 (324 in 1938), and accounted for the vast majority of Yiddish actors in Poland at the outbreak of WWII.

References

Mordechai V. Bernstein, "Di organizatsye fun di yidishe artistn," in Yidisher teater in Eyrope tsvishn beyde velt-milkhomes, vol. 1, Poyln, ed. Itsik Manger, Yonas Turkov (Jonas Turkow), and Moyshe Perenson, pp. 339–436 (New York, 1968)

Marek Web, "Organizacja i samopomoc: Z historii ruchu zawodowego aktorów żydowskich w Polsce," Pamiętnik Teatralny 41.1–4 [161–164] (1992): 135–174, special issue on Yiddish theater in Poland until 1939.

Web, Marek. "Yiddish Actors Union." YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe 8 November 2010. 22 March 2013 http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Yiddish_Actors_Union.