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Amazon Prime doc details the wild life of Jewish gangster Myron Sugerman
(New York Jewish Week) — Mafia movies will have you believe that wise guys aren’t born, they’re made. But that wasn’t the case for Myron Sugerman, a second-generation Jewish gangster who is the subject of the new documentary, “Last Man Standing: The Chronicles of Myron Sugerman.”
Sugerman — who made his mark (and his money) by becoming, as he says in the film, the “godfather of the illegal slot machine business” — took up the mantle from his father, Barney “Sugie” Sugerman, who kept company with and served as a partner in the New Jersey Jewish mob alongside the likes of Abner “Longy” Zwillman, Joe “Doc” Stacher and Abe Green.
In his heyday, Sugie cavorted with the legendary mobster Meyer Lansky, as well as some other bold-faced names who made their money a little more honestly, like singers Perry Como and Tony Bennett.
“Our lives were basically in Newark and Manhattan,” Sugerman, 85, says in the documentary. “Tenth Avenue on the west side was Jukebox Row. From 42nd Street all the way up to 45th, 46th Street were all jukebox operators. I would go into the city in the afternoon after school, and on Friday nights we used to go to Madison Square Garden with all the fellas who worked for my father.”
Per Sugerman, his father “missed nothing” — he had his hand in everything from “bootlegging, boxing, fixing fights, thievery” to “jukeboxes, vending machines, pinball machines, slot machines,” all of which were either illegal or could be used as fronts in money laundering schemes.
But these Jewish mobsters could be called upon for nobler pursuits as well. In 1939, Newark was home to both large Jewish and German populations — Fritz Kuhn, leader of the American Nazi party, included. As Sugerman tells it, Kuhn and his cronies would follow their meetings and rallies with trips into Jewish neighborhoods where they would terrorize their residents. Together with the Jewish prize fighter Nat Arno, Sugie’s associate Longy Zwillman formed an association called The Minutemen, named after the New Englanders who took up arms against the British.
The Newark Minutemen would throw stink bombs into the halls where Nazis met. “As the Nazis came running out, our guys were like a gauntlet. They’re standing there with the monkey wrenches and baseball bats and brass knuckles. And they beat the s*** out of these Nazis,” as Sugerman tells it.
Sugerman’s version of these stories might be lost to time if it weren’t for director Jonny Caplan and his production company Tech Talk Media. Released last January — and now available to stream on Amazon Prime — Caplan’s film features extensive interviews with Sugerman himself, a character who might remind you of your own Jewish grandfather — and also the guy who keeps putting the fix on the temple’s bingo game.
In a recent Zoom interview, Caplan told the New York Jewish Week that he was “kind of blown away” when he first heard Sugerman’s story, courtesy of a colleague who was helping Sugerman with his 2019 memoir, “The Chronicles of The Last Jewish Gangster: From Meyer to Myron.”
Later Caplan watched Sugerman’s interviews online. “He’s just such an amazing character that I fell in love with,” Caplan said. Although Tech Talk mostly covers the world of innovation — previous productions include documentaries about flying taxis and “robots that look after the elderly” — Caplan said they couldn’t resist bringing Sugerman’s story to life.
Born in 1938, Sugerman took up the family business at the age of 21, following his graduation from Bucknell University. Fluent in six languages (seven, if you count profanity, as Sugerman says in the documentary), he was given $3,000 in travelers checks by his father and sent off to Europe to start an “export business.” Sugerman hit a number of countries on the Continent, all while building his reputation and ability to sell pinball machines, slot machines and arcade equipment.
Eventually, Sugerman’s specialty would become Bally Bingo pinball machines, an addictive, “dynamite” arcade game that attracted gamblers and operators who handed out prizes. After its interstate shipment was banned in the United States in 1963, Sugerman would buy parts from all over the country in order to get the machines assembled. “I was the biggest contrabandist and bootlegger of Bally Bingo machines across the states,” he recalls in the documentary. Those efforts got him named in three state cases and three federal cases for illegal gambling and organized crime. And yes, he did serve jail time.
In a highlight of the documentary, Sugmeran is eventually connected with the famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960, Sugerman happened to find himself in Vienna. Feeling galvanized by the successful hunt for the man who drew up the plans for the Holocaust, Sugerman knocked on Wiesenthal’s door and asked how he could be of service. The answer, like so many other things in life, was money.
Myron Sugerman, right, meets with famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal in New York City in an undated photograph. Sugerman says he “sent very generous amounts of money” to help Wiesenthal hunt down war criminals. (Myron Sugerman/Impossible Media LLC)
“I was religious every week — we sent very generous amounts of money to Wiesenthal,” Sugerman says in the film. The pair struck up a friendship, and with each trip Wiesenthal took to New York City, Sugerman says Wiesenthal’s first call was to him. Eventually, prior to one of Sugerman’s trips to Asuncion, Paraguay, Wiesenthal asked the contrabandist to get him information regarding the whereabouts of notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who was rumored to have decamped there. I don’t want to give too much away, but if you enjoyed seeing Nazis killed in the film “Inglourious Basterds,” you might like how this story ends.
Sugerman provides details of his life, confessional style, as he leads the camera crew to local haunts in Little Italy and Brooklyn’s Kings Highway. Along the way, he meets friends who help him tell his tales of the old days, like “Baby John” Delutro, also known as “The Cannoli King,” and Johnny Chinatown, who points out a Chinatown landmark seen in “The Godfather.” Both are 20-plus years Sugerman’s junior, but still have ties to the Mafia life he knows and loves. (Those old days might be gone, but the incredible nicknames persist.)
At Grill Point, a now-shuttered kosher restaurant in Brooklyn, we see Sugerman chatting with Moishe Peretz, a retired mob boss who calmly recalls getting shot in the chest in 2016.
Though the mob plays a central role in Sugerman’s identity, his Jewish bona fides are just as significant. “The Jewish gangster really had a need, a psychological need, to show that the Jews could be just as tough as any other ethnicity, because they were going to break with the 2,000 years of our heads down, living in the ghetto, living fearful,” he says in the film. “There was definitely no identity crisis. These Jews were tough and ready to prove it.”
These days, Sugerman lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife, Clara. Though his life may be quieter now, his sense of humor and joie de vivre endure, and now as much as ever he’s committed to the work of defending the Jewish people. “Most guys at 85 years of age, if they’re lucky to be alive, are sitting in front of a lawn of grass, watching the grass grow,” he told the New York Jewish Week. “But I’m not comfortable — I’m not comfortable when the hair on the head of a Jew is moved out of place by an antisemite.”
To that end, Sugerman is putting together an organization with the goal of promoting Jewish pride — and he encourages all those interested in joining to reach out via his website.
More than anything, the toughness and tenacity of the Jewish people is a message that Sugerman wants to continue to send today. “That the era of bending your head, that the era of dismissing antisemitism as a mosquito on the tuchus of an elephant is over with,” he said.
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The post Amazon Prime doc details the wild life of Jewish gangster Myron Sugerman appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Mamdani once vowed to arrest Netanyahu. Now he won’t join protests against him.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday that he will not join protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in the city to address the United Nations annual gathering next week and pushed back on the suggestion that he ever encouraged New Yorkers to protest the Israeli leader.
“I do not have any plans to attend any protest at the U.N. General Assembly,” Mamdani told reporters. “To New Yorkers, I have never encouraged them to protest. What I have always told them is that they have the right to do so in the city.”
But two months ago, when Mamdani was asked what New Yorkers frustrated with Netanyahu should do when the Israeli leader came to the city for the annual fall U.N. event, the mayor repeatedly pointed to protest as an option. “I think one of the bedrocks of our city is protest,” Mamdani said at a July 22 press conference. “It is something that has been a part of what makes our city so special: that New Yorkers can express themselves, whether they are in support or in opposition, no matter the topic.”
Mamdani’s July remarks came after a legal review the mayor ordered concluded that he lacks the power to order the arrest of Netanyahu, a pledge he made during his mayoral election campaign.
In July, when a reporter followed up directly, “Are you urging them to protest?” Mamdani stopped short of saying yes. But he again pointed to protests as a way for New Yorkers who oppose Netanyahu to make their voices heard. “I’m simply saying that this is a city where — if anyone feels a level of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we will always respect,” Mamdani said. “I leave it to New Yorkers themselves to make that decision,” he added.
From arrest pledge to protest rights
Mamdani had campaigned on ordering Netanyahu’s arrest based on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in November 2024, which accused the Israeli prime minister, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Netanyahu has rejected the charges. The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court and the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the ICC months after it issued the warrants.
After taking office, Mamdani ordered a legal review and acknowledged in July that New York City does not have the authority to execute the ICC warrant.
He made that announcement in an unusual video address describing Netanyahu as “a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people” and declared that the Israeli leader would not be welcome in New York, home to the largest concentration of Jews in the United States.
The address drew criticism from Jewish leaders who questioned why the mayor was devoting so much attention to an arrest he acknowledged he could not legally carry out. The criticism came amid growing tension between Mamdani and parts of New York’s Jewish community over his rhetoric about Israel. Jewish organizations have also raised concerns about it contributing to a hostile climate for Jews across the city.
It was against that backdrop that Mamdani was pressed at the July press conference about what he would tell Palestinian supporters who had welcomed his promise to arrest Netanyahu, and were disappointed that he could not fulfill it. That is when he turned to protest as a remaining option. “I want to make it very clear that that welcome ends with me,” Mamdani said. “ I will not be welcoming Benjamin Netanyahu or any other war criminals when they come to this city.”
Netanyahu is expected to arrive in New York City next Wednesday under heavy security measures and address the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday before returning to Israel. One Israeli media outlet reported that the official plane carrying the Israeli leader, known as “Wings of Zion,” will land at Newark International Airport in New Jersey instead of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York due to concerns that Mamdani could try to prevent the aircraft from remaining parked at JFK during Netanyahu’s visit.
Protests against Netanyahu are planned outside his hotel and near the United Nations during his address. Jewish groups are also planning a mass rally against antisemitism on Wednesday.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Mamdani drew a sharper distinction between encouraging protests and defending the right to hold them. “We respect that right,” he said. “And this is a city that is proud of the Constitution, proud of the First Amendment; we’ll continue to do so.”
Mamdani cited the same First Amendment right when asked about students from Ramaz and SAR, two prominent Modern Orthodox schools, who are planning a prayer vigil outside the mayor’s residence on Friday morning in support of Israel. “They can have a vigil, or I’ve heard some describe it even as a ‘protest,’” he said. “Whatever it is intended to be, they have the room and space to do so outside of Gracie Mansion. Though, he added, he would “probably be somewhere else across the city” when they gather.
The post Mamdani once vowed to arrest Netanyahu. Now he won’t join protests against him. appeared first on The Forward.
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Renoir’s paintings have been stolen again. Their history may never be found.
The timing was as swift as Auguste Renoir’s brushstrokes. In the pre-dawn darkness of Sept. 8, thieves in camouflage and helmets took less than three minutes to saw through a wire-mesh fence and carry off four paintings from the neo-Provençal villa in the south of France where the artist spent the final years of his life.
Perhaps spooked by the city’s newly acquired police dog, the looters dropped two works as they fled from the Musée Renoir across the hillside above Cagnes-sur-Mer, through ancient olive groves, orange trees and figs. Two Renoir works remain missing — a reminder of the peculiar power these paintings exert, not only on those who love them, but on those who covet them and yearn to possess them at almost any cost.
Three of the four stolen works were MNRs — Musées Nationaux Récupération, the French designation for “orphan” works recovered after World War II but never restituted because their rightful owners could not be identified or located. French museums hold them provisionally, a limbo that for some has lasted more than 70 years.
For one of the missing Renoirs, the latest theft amounts to a double tragedy: wartime spoliation followed by modern looting.
German property records show that, during World War II “Jeune femme au puits” was “confiscated by SS man Brandl,” an apparent reference to Hermann Brandl, a Nazi officer and black marketeer who went by the pseudonym “Otto,” and led an organization that bought goods and artworks outside normal channels. Recovered in Bavaria, the painting passed through the Munich Central Collecting Point and was returned to France.
The painting is small and unfinished, oil on wood. A woman in a blue apron stands at a well, drawing water. We do not know her name, but Renoir preserved her gesture and her face. History did not preserve who she was.
I find that omission difficult to leave alone.
I felt something similar in Paris in 2019, when I first stood before another Renoir, “La Petite Irène,” in an exhibition at the Musée Maillol. The portrait had not been publicly exhibited in Paris for 73 years. Yet there was little to explain the tragic history of the girl in blue — or the fact that her portrait itself had been looted during the German Occupation.
In 1946, a French critic had encountered the portrait in a Paris exhibition of artworks recovered from Germany. He wrote that the painting brought him to his knees and asked: “Who was Mlle. Irène Cahen d’Anvers?”
Seventy-three years later, I was asking essentially the same question.
The question became a search. The search became an investigation. The investigation became a book.
Irène Cahen d’Anvers was eight when Renoir painted her, with cascading ginger hair, a distant gaze and lips pressed red as if bitten. She was born into a family of art collectors who were also part of one of Belle Époque France’s great Jewish banking dynasties. She survived the German Occupation. Her sister Élisabeth, her daughter Béatrice de Camondo and her two grandchildren did not. All were victims of the Holocaust.
Before the arrests, Irène’s son-in-law Léon Reinach entrusted her Renoir portrait to the Louvre for safekeeping in 1939. The museum evacuated it with treasures including the Mona Lisa and the French crown jewels to the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley.
But it was not safe there. In 1941, a Nazi looting unit arrived with a list of works belonging to private Jewish collectors and seized Irène’s portrait along with other paintings. Reinach boldly demanded its return, enlisting senior French museum officials in an unsuccessful campaign. Instead, the portrait eventually passed through Hermann Göring’s art-looting network.
After the war, Monuments Men investigators traced it to a Bavarian farmhouse owned by a murky art merchant near Neuschwanstein castle, a repository for looted art. In 1946, the portrait was returned to Irène, who later described it as “a remembrance of my youth and of all.”
Yet three years later, she sold it to Emil Bührle in a choice that seems almost incomprehensible. Bührle was a German-born Swiss arms manufacturer whose wartime fortune was built in significant part on weapons sales to Nazi Germany. He had also bought looted paintings during the war and, afterwards, was forced to restitute them — only, in several cases, to buy them back because he could not bear to part with them.
French archival records show that museum officials fiercely opposed the sale of “La Petite Irène.” Bührle’s own broker acknowledged that the Louvre had been interested in acquiring it, and a French commission voted to deny the export license needed to remove the Renoir from France.
Yet somehow those objections fell away. The broker’s correspondence showed that he bargained over the price and currency exchange rates with Irène and her banker. Bührle ultimately paid 240,000 Swiss francs — roughly $1.5 million in today’s dollars.
To understand Irène’s decision, I had to understand what the war had done to her.
During the Occupation, Irène left her grand Paris residence for a smaller apartment on Rue de la Tour in the 16th arrondissement and lived under the Italian surname of her former second husband. She survived by hiding in plain sight in occupied Paris, moving within a world of older Jewish women who survived by rotating among friends and discreet addresses. Helped by political connections and by a Catholic conversion decades earlier, she had obtained a coveted certificate declaring that she was not Jewish..
After the war, survivors returning from Auschwitz wrote to that Rue de la Tour apartment. Their painful letters told Irène what had happened to her missing family.
Her daughter Béatrice had survived arrest, Drancy and deportation to Auschwitz, where she was put to work in an ammunition factory. Newly uncovered records of letters from survivors indicate that she was murdered on Jan. 3, 1945, with more than 800 other prisoners, only weeks before Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on Jan. 27, which is now known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Béatrice died knowing that her two adult children were already dead, according to former prisoners who later wrote to Irène. Léon Reinach — the son-in-law who had fought to recover Irène’s portrait — also died at Auschwitz. Irène’s sister Élisabeth, painted beside her younger sister Alice in Renoir’s “Pink and Blue,” was murdered after deportation as well.
What, then, did Irène see when she looked at Renoir’s image of the eight-year-old girl she had once been?
A family relic? A remnant of a vanished world? A Jewish identity she had spent a lifetime navigating? Or simply losses too great to absorb?
The correspondence surrounding the 1949 sale offers one practical explanation. Bührle’s intermediary wrote that Irène, then 77, wanted to prevent the portrait from being sold at auction after her death because, given its value, it was unlikely any single heir could keep it.
It is an almost mundane explanation for a painting burdened with so much history: She wanted to avoid the public spectacle of an auction and Bührle had the fortune to pay for it quickly.
After the sale, “La Petite Irène” largely disappeared into Bührle’s private collection in Zürich. Only in recent years, now that the Bührle archives have been opened to greater scrutiny and much of the collection has gone on long-term loan to the Kunsthaus Zürich, has the history behind the painting received sustained public attention.
Today “La Petite Irène” hangs alone against an expanse of green in an austere reflection room at the Kunsthaus. Recently, the museum created the gallery around the portrait, inviting visitors to contemplate Irène’s story, record their reactions on a digital screen or draw responses to a history that is finally being confronted.
When I first saw the painting in Paris in 2019, I was struck not only by the girl but by the silence surrounding her. Now that silence is beginning to recede. The history has become part of the portrait’s biography — and part of the mystery of her gaze.
And now another Renoir has disappeared.
The woman in “Jeune femme au puits” still has no name. We know more about the travels of her painting than we know about her: taken during the war, recovered in Bavaria, returned to France, stolen again.
Paintings outlive the people who make them, own them, covet them, steal them and fight to recover them. Perhaps that is part of their strange power.
They carry what we remember — and what we fail to remember.
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Translation series connects English readers to prewar Eastern European Jewish life
דאָס איז איינער פֿון אַ סעריע קורצע אַרטיקלען אָנגעשריבן אױף אַ רעלאַטיװ גרינגן ייִדיש און געצילעװעט אױף סטודענטן. די מחברטע איז אַלײן אַ ייִדיש־סטודענטקע. דאָ קען מען לײענען די פֿריִערדיקע אַרטיקלען אין דער סעריע.
אַ דאַנק אַ סעריע נײַע ענגלישע איבערזעצונגען פֿון מיזרח־אײראָפּעיִשע ייִדישע ווערק, האָבן ענגליש־לייענערס הײַנט אַ געלעגנהײט זיך צו באַקענען מיטן ייִדישן לעבן־שטייגער פֿאַרן חורבן.
די סעריע, „ייִדישע שטימען“ — אַ בשותּפֿותדיקער איניציאַטיוו פֿון ייִװאָ און דעם פֿאַרלאַג בלומסבערי — איז שוין צו ניץ געקומען סײַ לערערס פֿון קורסן, וווּ די סטודענטן פֿאַרשטייען ניט קיין ייִדיש, סײַ לייענערס מיט אַן אינטערעס צו דער ייִדישער געשיכטע.
„ייִדישע שטימען“ באַשטייט פֿון ביכער װאָס זענען קײן מאָל פֿריִער ניט איבערגעזעצט געװאָרן אױף ענגליש. זיי נעמען אַרײַן אַ ברײטע גאַמע אידעעס און פּערספּעקטיװן װאָס האָבן צוגעטראָגן צו דער מאָדערנער ייִדישער קולטור אין (און מחוץ) מיזרח־אײראָפּע.
זינט 2023, װען די סעריע איז לאַנצירט געװאָרן, זענען אַרױס פֿינעף בענד, װאָס צװײ פֿון זײ — „מיסיסיפּי“ און „די חסידישע װאַרשע“ — זענען ערשט דערשינען מיט אַ פּאָר װאָכן צוריק. ביז איצט האָט מען איבערגעזעצט בלויז ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע װערק אָבער מיט דער צײַט װעט מען איבערזעצן טעקסטן פֿון אַנדערע לשונות, אַזױ װי פּױליש און העברעיִש, וואָס מע האָט ביז איצט ניט איבערגעזעצט אויף ענגליש.
די סעריע, סובסידירט פֿון דער משפּחה פֿון האַריעט יאַסקי, װערט רעדאַקטירט פֿון אַליסאַ קװינט און עליסאַ בן-פּורת. (איך אַלײן אַרבעט מיט זײ װי אַן אַסיסטענטקע). קװינט איז אַ היסטאָריקערין פֿונעם ייִדישן טעאַטער, און בן-פּורת איז אַ היסטאָריקערין פֿונעם ייִדישן לעבן אין רוסלאַנד און אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד. ס׳איז דערפֿאַר נישט קײן חידוש אַז דער סעריעס קוקװינקל איז אַ היסטאָרישער. כאָטש די איבערגעזעצטע װערק רעפּרעזענטירן פֿאַרשײדענע קאַטעגאָריעס — למשל פּיעסעס, זכרונות און דערצײלונגען — איז דער עיקר זײער היסטאָרישע רײַכקײט.
„מיר קלײַבן אױס טעקסטן װאָס װאַרפֿן אַ שײַן סײַ אױף ברײטע טענדענצן, סײַ אױף ספּעציפֿישע פֿראַגעס װעגן ייִדיש לעבן אין מיזרח־אייראָפּע, און אין אַנדערע לענדער װוּ מיזרח־אייראָפּעיִשע ייִדן האָבן געװױנט װי אימיגראַנטן אָדער פּליטים. אַפֿילו די ׳ליטעראַרישע׳ װערק װי דערצײלוגען און פּיעסעס פֿאָרשן מיר פֿון אַ היסטאָרישן שטאַנדפּונקט“, האָט מיר קװינט געזאָגט.
צוליב דעם דאָזיקן שליחות שפּילט אַ װיכטיקע ראָלע דער אַרײַנפֿיר צו יעדן באַנד, װאָס איז תּמיד געשריבן פֿון אַ היסטאָריקער. אַ מאָל איז דער מחבר פֿון דער הקדמה אױך דער איבערזעצער, און אַ מאָל נעמען אונטער באַזונדערע מענטשן די צװײ אױפֿגאַבעס. „דעם היסטאָריקערס אַרבעט אינעם אַרײַנפֿיר איז אַרױסצוציִען און צוצובינדן די ביאָגראַפֿישע, גײַסטיקע און געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע אַספּעקטן פֿונעם װערק, אױף אַן אופֿן װאָס איז גלײַכצײַטיק װיסנשאַפֿטלעך און צוטריטלעך צו אַלע לײענערס, אַרײַננעמענדיק די װאָס האָבן פֿריִער ניט געװוּסט קײן סך װעגן דער טעמע,“ האָט בן-פּורת געזאָגט.
ביז אַהער באַשטײט די סעריע פֿון די דאָזיקע בענד, װאָס זענען אַלע בראָשירטע ביכלעך גרינג אַרומצוטראָגן אין אַ רוקזאַק און צו לײענען אַבי װוּ:
— „דרײַ ייִדישע פּיעסעס פֿון פֿרױען׃ װײַבערשע ייִדישע פּערספּעקטיװן“, איבערגעזעצט פֿון אַלען לויִס ריקמאַן, מיראָ מניעװסקי און אליע פּיאַצאַ, מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון אַליסאַ קװינט. דאָס בוך נעמט אַרײַן דרײַ פּיעסעס אָנגעשריבן פֿון דראַמאַטורגינס אין דער רוסישער אימפּעריע, אין פּױלן און אין ברוקלין, ניו־יאָרק, צװישן 1880 און 1920. אַלע דרײַ באַהאַנדלען קאָנטראָװערסיעלע „װײַבערשע“ טעמעס אַזױ װי חתונה און גט, שװאַנגערשאַפֿט, קינדל־קאָנטראָל און פּראָסטיטוציע. דראַמעס װאָס באַטראַכטן איבערלעבונגען דורך װײַבערשע אױגן זענען אַ זעלטנקײט אין דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור.
— „חורבן דובאָװע׃ אַ פּינקס פֿון אַ טױטער שטאָט“, פֿון רחל פֿײַגנבערג (1926), איבערגעזעצט פֿון סינטיע און אַלבערט מאַדאַנסקי, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון עליסאַ בן-פּורת (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). פֿײַגנבערג באַשרײַבט דאָס לעבן און דעם טראַגישן אוקמום פֿונעם שטעטל דובאָװע אין אוקראַיִנע, װוּ כּמעט אַלע ייִדן זענען בעת דער רוסישער בירגערקריג אין 1919 אָדער פֿאַרטיליקט אָדער פֿאַרטריבן געװאָרן. װען נישט פֿײַגנבערגס רירנדיקע דערצײלונג װאָלט דאָס ייִדישע לעבן אין דובאָװע אין גאַנצן פֿאַרגעסן געװאָרן. איר נאַראַטיװ האָט געדינט פֿאַר אַ גבֿית־עדות אינעם מישפּט פֿון שלום שװאַרצבאָרד אין 1927.
— „די מוטער פֿונעם ייִדישן טעאַטער׃ זכרונות פֿון אסתּר־רחל קאַמינסקאַ“ (1927-1926), איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון מיכל יאַשינסקי (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). קאַמינסקאַ איז געװען די באַרימטסטע ייִדישע אַקטריסע פֿון איר דור — טאַקע אַ „סופּערשטערן“ סײַ אױף דער בינע, סײַ אין ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע פֿילמען. זי איז געװען ספּעציעל באַקאַנט פֿאַר אירע מאַמע־ראָלעס: דער טיטל פֿון דער איבערזעצונג פֿאַררופֿט זיך סײַ אױף דעם, סײַ אױף איר השפּעה אױף דער אַנטװיקלונג פֿון ייִדישן טעאַטער. קאַמינסקאַס זכרונות זײַנען פֿול מיט אומפֿאַרגעסלעכע געשיכטעס װעגן די פֿריילעכע מאָמענטן און די שװעריקײטן פֿונעם טעאַטער־לעבן, און מיט באַמערקונגען װעגן דער טעאַטער־קונסט װאָס זי האָט געהאָלפֿן אױספֿורעמען.
— „מיסיסיפּי׃ אַ ייִדישע פּיעסע װעגן דעם סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין“ (1935), פֿון לײב מלאך, איבערגעזעצט פֿון עלען פּערעצמאַן, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון אַליסאַ קװינט (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). מלאך האָט אָנגעשריבן די פּיעסע בתּשובֿה אױפֿן טרויעריק באַרימטן סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין אין די דרום־שטאַטן, װען נײַן אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקער זענען פֿאַלש באַשולדיקט געװאָרן אין פֿאַרגװאַלדיקן צװײ װײַסע פֿרױען אין אַ באַן. די װאַרשעװער טרופּע „יונג טעאַטער“, רעזשיסירט פֿון מיכל װײַכערט, האָט געשפּילט „מיסיסיפּי“ איבער 100 מאָל. דער ייִדישער עולם האָט מיטגעפֿילט מיט די שװאַרצע פּערסאָנאַזשן, סײַ פֿון אַ הומאַניסטישן שטאַנדפּונקט, סײַ צולוב די אײגענע איבערלעבונגען מיט אַנטיסעמיטיזם אין פּױלן.
— „די חסידישע װאַרשע׃ ר׳ זלמן און דאָס אַלעקסאַנדער־שטיבל“ (1960), פֿון יחיאל האָפֿער, איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון יונתּן בױאַרין (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). די מעשׂיות דערצײלן די אָפֿט־הומאָריסטישע טווּנגען פֿון ר׳ זלמן, אַן עקסצענטרישער לופֿטמענטש און אַ חסיד פֿונעם אַלעקסאַנדער־רבין. דורך זלמנס אַוואַנטורעס שילדערט האָפֿער דאָס לעבן פֿון אַ װאַרשעװער שטיבל, װוּ מענער האָבן געדאַװנט, געלערנט תּורה, געגעסן און זיך אויסגעטענהט. די דערצײלונגען מאָלן אױס אַ לעבעדיק בילד פֿון פֿאַר־מלחמהדיקן חסידות אין װאַרשע, װאָס איז געבליבן פֿעסט, נישט־געקוקט אױף דער ייִדישער מאָדערניזירונג ביזן חורבן.
אין 2027 און 2028 װעט „ייִדישע שטימען“ אַרױסגעבן:
— די דראַמאַטישע זכרונות פֿון שמעון דזשיגאַן, פֿונעם גאָר באַרימטן קאָמעדיע־פּאָר, דזשיגאַן און שומאַכער (איבערגעזעצט פֿון מרים אייזיקס, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון דיעגאָ ראָטמאַן).
— חיים גראַדעס נישט־פּובליקירט מײַסטערװערק, „די פֿרױען פֿון דער געטאָ“, װעגן אַ גרופּע פֿרױען װאָס האָבן איבערגעלעבט די װילנער געטאָ (איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון דוד פֿישמאַן).
— די פּױליש־שפּראַכיקע זכרונות פֿון יולאַ װאַלד, די טאָכטער פֿון אַ חסידישן קרעטשמער אין דער צײַט פֿון דער ערשטער װעלט־מלחמה (איבערגעזעצט פֿון מאַרטאַ דודזיק־רודקאָװסקאַ, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון גלען דײַנער).
— אױטאָביאָגראַפֿישע מעשׂיות װעגן די רײַזעס פֿון יוסף יצחק שניאורסון (דעם ריי״ץ), דער זעקסטער ליובאַוויטשער רבי (איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון אלי רובין).
„מיר האָבן כּמעט ניט קײן צײַט אָפּצוכאַפּן דעם אָטעם“, האָט אַליסאַ קװינט געזאָגט. „יעדער פּראָיעקט איז אַן אוצר, מיטן אײגענעם קוקװינקל אױף די דערפֿאַרונגען און געדאַנקען פֿון מיזרח־אײראָפּעיִשע ייִדן. ס׳איז אַ פּריװילעגיע זיך צו טײלן מיט אַזעלכע באַטײַטיקע טעקסטן מיט ענגליש־רעדנדיקע לײענערס.“
קױפֿט דאָ אַלע פֿינעף בענד פֿון דער סעריע ( כּדי צו פֿאַרשפּאָרן 20%, ניצט דעם קאָד YIDDISHVOICES בעתן באַצאָלן).
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