“Whom Time Obeys,” a play based on the heroism of Jews in the ghettoes of Lithuania and Jewish partisans, opened here last night at the Vakhtangov Theater, one of the major Moscow playhouses.
One of the central characters in the drama, written by Tur and Lev Sheinin, is Rubenstein, a 72-year-old clock maker, who is summoned by the Nazi Gauleiter of Riga and ordered to repair his rare 15th century Genoa clock. In return, the watch-maker is promised his life.
Rubenstein repairs the valuable antique but plants a time bomb within it–as he has been ordered to do by the partisan movement. He is murdered by the Nazis after he delivers the clock, but is revenged when it explodes three days later, and kills the gaieties and his chief aides.
One scene is laid in the ghetto on Passover night. Rubenstein and one of his friends sit and recall seders of other years, when a crash of glass and a volley of shots is heard — the Nazis are raiding the ghetto. The contrast between Passover nights during the pre-Nazi period and under the German occupation is one of the high points of the play.
The playwrights, two Jewish journalists born in Kiev, have four other plays running in Moscow theaters at present — at the Kamerny Theater, the Lenin Komsomol Theater, the Theater Satire, and the Red Army Theater. During the war they served as war correspondents and both achieved the rank of captain.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
