TURKOW

TURKOW , Polish family originating in Warsaw. itzḤak turkow (pen name Grudberg; 1906–1970), Yiddish actor and writer. From 1925 to 1957, Itzhak Turkow worked with the Yiddish Art Theater in Warsaw, the Vilna Troupe, and the Jewish State Theater. From 1946 to 1950 he also edited a weekly "Lower Silesia." He settled in Israel in 1957, edited the weekly Folksblat (1958–68), and was the author of Yidish Teater in Poyln (1951), Mame Esther Rachel, a biography of Esther Rachel *Kaminska (1953), Varshever Purim-Shpiler (1957), memoirs Oyf Mayn Veg (1964), Geven a Yidish Teater (1968), and monographs on Peretz, Asch, Goldfaden, and Gordin. He was director of Bet Shalom Ash in Bat-Yam from 1959.

zygmunt turkow (1896–1970), Yiddish actor and director. Turkow toured with Rachel Kaminska, and with her founded the Jewish Art Theater, Warsaw, 1929. He toured widely playing in Molière, Shalom Aleichem, Gogol, Goldfaden, and the early Yiddish play Serkele by *Ettinger. He went to Brazil after World War ii and was co-founder of the Brazilian National Theater. He also directed and acted in Yiddish films. He settled in Israel in 1952, founded Zuta, a traveling theater, in 1956, and directed it until it disbanded in 1967. He also wrote plays and four volumes of memoirs.

jonas turkow (1898–1988), actor, in charge of theatrical entertainment in the Warsaw ghetto during World War ii. He started his career with the Kaminska Theater in Warsaw, and managed theaters in Vilna, Warsaw, and Cracow. He took part in several Yiddish films, playing the title role in Lamed-Vovnik and directing J. Opatoshu's In Poylishe Velder (1929). He and his wife, Diana Blumenfeld, were in the Warsaw ghetto until 1943 and were the only two actors to come out of it alive. In his book Azoy Is Es Geven ("That's How it Was," 1948), Turkow describes ghetto life in much detail and explains how the theater he organized functioned amid want and peril. After the war he toured the Displaced Persons camps and continued writing of his wartime experiences: In Kamf farn Lebn ("Fighting for Life," 1949), Farloshene Shtern ("Stars Extinguished," 1953), and Nokh der Bafrayung ("After the Liberation," 1959). Settling in New York in 1947, he became archivist for the theater department of *yivo in 1958. He settled in Israel in 1966.

Marc *Turkow (1904–1983) was a Yiddish journalist and writer in Warsaw and Buenos Aires.

bibliography:

lnyl, 2 (1958), 369–70; 4 (1961), 56–62.