Photographers
unknown

Sitter
Luba Kadison, December 13, 1906 - May 4, 2006

Date
unknown

Type
Portrait

Medium
Photograph

Credit Line
The Yiddish Theatrical Alliance

Testimony
"Luba Kadison, a native of Kovno born in 1907, was a prominent Yiddish actress who performed in Yiddish theatres all over the world.

During World War I, the Russians ordered all Jews to leave Kovno within twenty-four hours. From there, she and her family traveled by train to Vilna, where they began life anew. While living there, Luba became a member of the Vilna Troupe. Luba eventually married fellow actor Joseph Buloff.

Luba states:

The Vilna Troupe was a very special theatre. It was a unique theatre of advanced Yiddish theatre in the language -- and also in the repertoire that we played -- that was actually a theatre, a cosmopolitan theatre in the Yiddish language--because we played not only Yiddish plays. We played Yiddish plays, we played in Hebrew, we played Peretz Hirshbein, but we also played Russian plays like Andreyev, like Gorky, Nadir, and other plays, and even French plays -- we played “The Miser” of Molière …

"We were … the Vilna Troupe was like a family. And I grew up there … my father [Leib Kadison] was already in the States. The Vilna Troupe parted … not parted, but there was a couple -- Alexander Asro and Sonia Alomis -- who left the Vilna Troupe. There was a love story involved, and they formed a second Vilna Troupe. And they started to pull out actors from the original Vilna Troupe which was at that time in Romania, in Bucharest ..."  

Source of Testimony
Luba Kadison, Interview by Martin Boris