‘A Slice of Eastern Europe in Johannesburg’: Yiddish Theatre in Doornfontein, 1929–49

Abstract

This article explores how location influenced attitudes to the preservation of Yiddish language and culture and hence the construction of historical memory. Between 1929 and 1949 the Johannesburg Jewish Workers' Club had a thriving Dramatic Section which produced Yiddish theatre with a leftist slant. It was situated in Doornfontein, the suburb east of Johannesburg, that from the early 1930s was the focus of the Eastern European immigration. Based on an examination of the Yiddish weekly newspaper, the Afrikaner Idishe Tsaytung [African Jewish Newspaper], this paper will examine why a permanent Yiddish theatre group never emerged, and why this rich and lively episode was ‘forgotten’ and erased from the collective memory of South African Jewry.