Menashe OppenheimMenashe Oppenheim ((Menasha, Menasze Oppenheim, sometimes used pseudonym Mieczyslaw) (1905-1973) Polish Jewish singer, composer, songwriter, collector and performer of folk songs. Born in the eastern borderlands of Poland, in the early thirties he performed at revi-teater in Kovne (Kaunas

Kaunas

Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...

, now in Lithuania) under the direction of Jonas Turkow

Jonas Turkow

Jonas Turkow was born in 1898 in Warsaw, Poland and died in 1987 in Tel Aviv, Israel. He was an actor, stage manager, director and writer.He was the brother of the actor Zygmunt Turkow, the actor and writer Icchak Turkow and the journalist Marek Turkow, and husband of the famous actress Diana...

. In the mid-thirties he worked at the Scala theater. He then became a leading Yiddish film actor. As a singer he recorded many records in Yiddish. He composed and wrote lyrics. He belonged to the Jewish Section of the prewar Association of Theatrical Authors And Composers in Warsaw.

In the late 1930s he appeared in several important Jewish sound films, including Joseph Green's Di freylekhe kabtsonim (1937) with Shimon Dzigan

Shimon Dzigan

Shimon Dżigan was a Yiddish comedian. His father was a soldier in the Russian military. After the outbreak of the first world war Dzigan was apprenticed to a tailor to help the family make ends meet....

 and Israel Shumacher

Israel Shumacher

Israel Shumacher was a Yiddish comedian who worked together with Shimon Dzigan, thus forming "Dzigan and Shumacher", one of the most famous Yiddish comic duos in the 20th century. Israel Shumacher first met Shimon Dzigan at the revolutionary Jewish theater in Łódź, Poland...

 (directed by Zygmunt Turkow

Zygmunt Turkow

Zygmunt Turkow was a Polish actor, director, playwright and director of Jewish origin from Warsaw, who became famous for roles in the pre-war Jewish films and stage plays in Yiddish. His brother, Jonas Turkow, was also a noted actor and stage manager.Shortly after German invasion of Poland in 1939...

, screenwriter Moishe Broderzon

Moishe Broderzon

Moishe Broderzon was a Yiddish poet, theatre director, and the founder of the Łódź literary group Yung-yidish....

, music by Henech Kon

Henech Kon

Henech Kon, Henryk Kon, 1890-1972, born in Łódź to a Chassidic family, sent at the age of 12 to his grandfather in Kutno, where he studied torah but also studied with local klezmers, absorbing folk music from players and badkhonim...

) and Mamele" (1938) with Molly Picon

Molly Picon

Molly Picon was an American actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a lyricist and dramatic storyteller....

.

In February 1939 he accepted Joseph Zeid's (Joseph Seiden)'s offer to play the lead in a movie called Kol Nidre. He left for the United States to do the filming; at the completion of the movie, World War II had begun and Oppenheim was unable to return to Poland. He survived the Holocaust in the USSR-occupied part of eastern Poland, but his entire family died during the Nazi occupation. After 1945 he emigrated to South America. In 1940-1960 he worked in various Yiddish theaters in the United States.

Menashe Oppenheim performed in Yoshe Kalb with Miriam Kressyn

Miriam Kressyn

Miriam Kressyn , one of the "First Ladies of the Yiddish Theater", acted and sang on stage, film and radio; she wrote plays as well. -Personal life:...

 in 1972 He died on 23 October 1973 and was buried in the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens, New York, on land owned by the Jewish theatrical union.

Filmography

• 1937 Tkies khaf (The Vow)
• 1937 Di freylekhe kabtsonim (The Jolly Paupers)
• 1938 Mamele
• 1939 Kol Nidre (Music Sholom Secunda)
• 1941 Mazel Tov Yidn