State Jewish Theater (Romania) - IKUF

IKUF

This group who had improvised the play in Botoşani were part of the Yiddisher Kultur Ferband (IKUF). They would evolve and repeat their performance of Nacht-Tog. This performance was sharply divided into two parts, Nacht being the dark past and Tog expressing a belief in life. The play used songs both from the forced labor camps and from Yiddish theater before the war.

IKUF would become a key institution in the next few years, publishing a magazine IKUF Bleter, organizing libraries and conferences, and evolving Teatrul IKUF, a new Yiddish theater led initially by Iacob Mansdorf. Drawing its mostly young, professional actors from cities around Romania, their production of Moşe Pincevski's new play Ich Leb (I Live) about resistance in a forced labor camp put them on the map in a Bucharest where the Communist Party was moving toward hegemony. Ceremonies for the play's opening included a number of speakers, including Minister of Art Mihail Ralea and Iosif Eselaohn of the socialist party Ihud.

Mansdorf, according to Bercovici, tired of leading a theater troupe after only two years; some of his actors left with him. Others, including Sevilla Pastor, Dina König, Seidy Glück, Moris Siegler and Marcu Glückman, reorganized under Bernard Lebli, and became the new permanent company of the Baraşeum, with an unprecedented subsidy from the government. They began their new season January 11, 1948 with Dos Groise Ghivens; this was followed by Nekomenemer (The Song of War) by French Yiddish writer Haim Sloves.