Yizkor

Shammai Rosenblum (Szamaj Rozenblum) (1914–1978). Born in Słupce, near Lodz, Poland, Rosenblum trained in Lodz under the writer and theater director Moshe Broderzon. During the German occupation, he performed as an actor and singer in Lodz ghetto, and later at Auschwitz and Ebensee. Liberated in May 1945, he continued to perform in Jewish DP camps, specializing in "dramatic recitations." In the later 1940s, Rosenblum relocated first to France, and finally to Israel. Rosenblum recast the experiences he had witnessed firsthand during the war (including a Kinderaktion in Lodz ghetto) into a one-man performance piece in Hebrew and Yiddish entitled Yizkor, In Memory of the Victims of the European Jewish Catastrophe 1940-1945. A recording sponsored by Yad Vashem and the World Jewish Congress was issued in 1958.