Countries behind the Iron Curtain including the Soviet Union itself, are participating actively in the world-wide celebration of the hundredth-anniversary of the birth of Sholem Aleichem, noted Jewish author, according to dispatches and foreign radio broadcasts monitored here.
In Moscow, last night, a meeting was held at which leading Soviet writers read papers devoted to the works of the late Sholem Aleichem. Boris Polevoi represented the USSR Ministry of Culture as well as the All-Union Writers Union. Prominent actors read from the works of Sholem Aleichem in Yiddish, while Yiddish songs were rendered at the meeting. Paul Robeson, American basso, appeared at the meeting and sang some Negro spirituals as well as Yiddish songs.
The Moscow radio today broadcast reports of the meeting, adding that the Jewish Ghetto conditions described in the works of Sholem Aleichem "are gone forever." The Jewish people in the USSR, stated the broadcast, "received equality in the Soviet Union, like all underprivileged people." Pravda, organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, carried an article devoted to Sholem Aleichem and to the "classic Yiddish literature."
In Poland and Rumania other special events were held and scheduled in honor of Sholem Aleichems memory. In Jassy, Rumania, the late satirist’s famous story, "The Lottery," was produced by a theatrical group which introduced the dramatization with a note stating: "Sholem Aleichem himself was the greatest gift won by the Yiddish mass culture."
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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.
