Soviet-jewish General Who Broke Nazi “blitzkrieg” Will Be Immortalized in Play

Lev Dovator, the Soviet-Jewish general who led the Cossack attack on the Nazis in the Rostov district which broke the German offensive and initiated the Nazi retreat along the entire Soviet front will be immortalized in a play which will be produced by the Soviet Jewish State Theater, it was announced here today. Gen. Dovator was killed at the front while pursuing the retreating Germans.

The announcement that Gen. Dovator will be made the central figure is a play depicting the heroism of Soviet Jews in the fight against the Nazi invading forces was made by S. Michael, internationally known Jewish artist, who is director of the Soviet Jewish State Theater. The Theater, which was established in Moscow by the Soviet Government about 25 years ago, has now been moved to Tashkent, to accommodate the cultural needs of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews evacuated from the war zones as well as the huge number of Polish Jews who are now permitted to reside in Tashkent, Samarkand and other cities in Soviet Uzbekistan.

The Soviet Jewish State Theater, which will now remain in Tashkent where all central Jewish institutions from Moscow are situated, will also produce a play showing the joint struggle against Hitler by Jews and Poles in Nazi-occupied Poland. With Tashkent now the largest Jewish center in the U.S.S.R., the Soviet Government will finance the Jewish State Theater here in the same way as it did in Moscow.

“I cherish the dream of producing very shortly the heroic epic of Gen. Dovator,” Michael said today.” A son of the Jewish people, the Red Army commander showed himself to be a hero and a patriot. The Jews in Soviet Russia, grateful to their country, have brought forward many such heroes in recent months. Our theater will put all our skill and heart into the production. We want to make it a solemn hymn to all Soviet patriots of all nationalities. In choosing Gen. Dovator as the subject of the play, we could hardly find a figure more noble and colorful than this Jewish cavalryman and brave general who commanded regiments of Cossacks who in Czarist Russia were used by reactionary forces for bloody pogroms against innocent Jews. I personally will regard it a great honor to portray this great man on the stage.”

Pointing out that “there is no life for the Jewish people, or for any individual Jew, as long as Hitler is alive, “Michael appealed to the Jews of America “to revive the ancient military fame of the Jewish people” and to concentrate on the fight against Hitler by taking as an example the Soviet Jews “who are courageously defending their country to the last breath.”