Yiddish Theatre > Theatre as resilience and recovery
Bergen-Belsen Theatre Troupe, Photo Album
c. 1962
Yiddish Theatre Collection
One of the most powerful acts of revival after the horrors of the Holocaust took place just outside a former concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen, which was transformed into a Displaced Persons (DP) camp after World War II. Unwilling to be broken by the barbarity they endured, a group of Jewish survivors established a theatre troupe in the DP camp, and named it Katset (Yiddish for “K-Z,” the German abbreviation for concentration camp). The troupe performed in DP camps throughout Europe between 1945-1947, playing Yiddish classics in addition to portrayals of the recent evils that most of their viewers had witnessed first-hand. This photo album seems to have been assembled around 1962 by co-founder Sami Feder, although the pictures are from the performances directly after the war.