Israel Segal — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Israel Segal (1906/7-1985) was an actor and the director of the Jewish Lithuanian-Israeli Theater. He was the artistic director of the theater in the Vilna Ghetto, a founder of the She'erit Hepleta (The Remnant of Jewry) theater in Germany and an actor in the Ohel Theater in Tel Aviv.   

Israel Segal (the son of Avraham) was born and grew up in the town of Šiauliai in north-west Russia (Lithuania). He studied acting at the State High School of Acting under the direction of Mikhail Chekov in Kovno and from 1932, began working professionally as an actor. He was the assistant-director of the Lithuanian theater in Klaipėda            

When World War Two broke out, Lithuania was occupied by the U.S.S.R. and Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and U.S.S.R. according to the terms of the Ribbentrop-Molotov treaty: Vilna was transferred to the Lithuanians and became the capital of Lithuania. All the theatrical activity in Lithuania that had been in Kovno (the temporary capital) moved to Vilna. With the annexation of Lithuania to U.S.S.R. and its declaration as a republic in 1940, it was intended to establish a Jewish theater group in Kovno and a national Jewish theater in Vilna. Initially, it sufficed for the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture to increase the theater subsidy. The dramaturge of the united theater was the writer-poet Haim Grada, who was a member of Jung Vilna (Young Vilna), the directors were Nicolai Elyashiv (the former artistic director of Ramikut (Revue un Miniature Kunst-Teater, the artistic theater for revue and miniatures and the son of Ba'al Hamahshavot) and Israel Segal. Yitzhak Ziger, a refugee from Warsaw, who had been the artistic director of "Witt" (the Jewish theater of Warsaw) for many years, was the artistic director after he fled to Vilna – in the Ramikut. In 1941, after Ziger made aliyah to Israel, his place was taken by Alperowitz, a businessman from Kovno, who was close to circles in the left. The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture decided to create a national theater by merging the theaters of Vilna and Kovno.

A joint committee (Kovno-Vilna) was set up to merge the two theaters and Segal was a member on behalf of the Vilna Theater. All the Jewish actors in Vilna at that time were members of the troupe, but the committee also had to choose several actors from Kovno who would move to Vilna. Segal, together with Shabtai Blecher, and the actress Musia Smorgonski, who was chairman of the workers' committee, negotiated with Stalizka, the representative of "Gorkom" (the municipal secretariat of the party) the line-up for the new theater. The writer, David Omero, the editor of the Vilna newspaper Vilner Emes (The Truth from Vilna), was appointed director-general of the theater, Nicolai Max Viskind, the director was artistic manager and Segal was his deputy. The theater was formally called The Jewish National Drama Theater as the celebrations for the 1^st of May, 1941 approached (Vilner Yiddishe Maaluchisher Dramatatur). The festive opening took place in a hall specially renovated for the occasion. On opening night the play performed was Platoon Kretchet by Alexander Korniychok directed by Viskind, and the second play, under the direction of Henrik Shara (Shapiro) was Imcha (With You) by Shalom Aleichem. The first production was staged on the 21^st of June, 1941; a few hours later the Barbarossa Campaign (the invasion of Soviet Russia by Nazi Germany) began and within a few days, the German troops reached Vilna.

Segal survived the mass murder that was perpetrated on the Jews of Vilna when the Nazis occupied the city. When the Vilna ghettos were set up in September, 1941 he was sent to the smaller of the two ghettos (Ghetto 2). He was accepted there to work as a janitor by Mendel Balbrisski, manager of a department of the Judenrat. In October, Ghetto 2 was liquidated; while the ghetto was being liquidated he went into hiding with Trukman, an English teacher and then they both sneaked into Ghetto 1, which was the only ghetto left in Vilna. Segal lived at 3 Arklin Street where the heads of the Judenrat, Jewish police and other important personages such as Anatol Fried, chairman of the Judenrat and Police Chief, Jacob Gens, who was a relative of his, also lived.

With the liquidation of the ghetto, Segal was deported to the labor camps in Estonia on the last transport from the Vilna Ghetto. The train was delayed for a few hours at Šiauliai; the Jews on the train took advantage of the opportunity to throw notes about the fate of their fellow Jews that were intended for the Jewish railway workers. Balbrisski, who was deported on the same train, wrote in his memoirs that a Gestapo officer came up to him with one of the notes written in Yiddish and asked him to translate it for him; it was a note by Segal which said: "I, Israel Segal from Šiauliai, am now on my way by freight train from Vilna to Estonia to work. They have liquidated the ghetto in Vilna." In Estonia, Segal was imprisoned at the Klooga camp and at the Ilinorma camp which was quite a distance from all the other work camps.

After the war ended, Segal moved to Munich in the American sector of Germany where most of the survivors were. He founded a theater there which he called MYT (Minchener Yiddishe Teater: The Jewish Theater of Munich) – 'the representative theater of the Jewish remnant' (raprezentanz-teater fon der she'erit hapleta) associated with the Directorate of Culture and Education of the Central Committee of the Jewish remnant in the American sector of Germany; he was a member of the board of the theater and secretary of the actors' union. One of the plays he acted in   was Shlomo Molcho by Aharon Glantz-Leyeles. On the 10^th of August, 1946 Segal testified at the Nuremberg Trials. In his testimony he said that he had indeed been the manager of the theater in the ghetto that the Germans had forced the Jews to open. However, in a an article that he published the same year in the first issue of Fon Lazten Hurban (From the Last Destruction), - the journal of the history of the Jews during the Nazi regime – edited by Israel Kaplan under the auspices of the Central Historical Committee of the Committee of the Remnant of Jewry, Segal admitted that Yaakov Gens was responsible for founding the theater.

Segal's wife, the actress Mira Blaufarb, perished in the Holocaust. After the war he married Betty, an actress from Vilna.

In 1949 Segal and his wife made aliyah in the wave of mass immigration after the establishment of the State of Israel and settled in Tel Aviv. In December, 1950 a group of actors who were born in Eastern Europe got together to form a Yiddish repertory theater. Even though some of them knew Hebrew, they decided to set up a Yiddish theater for the actors who were new immigrants and unable to find work in the Hebrew theater. Segal (a polyglot who spoke seven languages) was one of the key members of the group together with David Hart and Natan Wolfovitz, who was head of the theater. The theater was in Giv'at Aliyah, a neighborhood in southern Jaffa. According to Rachel Rozanski, there was no need for a director because the actors knew the roles by heart; this theater was "almost a direct transfer of the Yiddish theater from Eastern Europe to the Israeli reality, not only because of the repertoire but also because of the acting, the directing and even the atmosphere." The group even managed to overcome the objections of the establishment (through the Film and Play Review Board and enforcement authorities) to Yiddish theater, with a petition to the High Court. However, despite all the difficulties, the theater closed its doors on the 30^th of July, 1952.  

In 1953 Segal joined the Ohel theater where he worked until 1956. He appeared in Mendel Hahocher (Mendel the Tenant) by Y.L.Peretz, Haholeh Hamedumeh (The Hypochondriac) by Moliѐre (1953), Ha'adam Ha15 (The 15^th Man) by Edward Hall (1953), Sof Haolam (The End of the World) by Moshe Shamir (1954), Hem Yad'u Mah Retzonum (They Knew What They Wanted) by Sydney Howard (1955), Eldorado by Yigal Mossinsohn (1955), Donna Grazia by Kadia Molodovski (1956). In 1964 he returned to the Ohel theater where he worked until it closed down in 1969.

Segal appeared mostly in cameo roles. During the 70s he appeared in a number of Israeli movies: Hatimhoni (The Dreamer) (1970), Floch (1972), Michael Sheli (My Michael) (1975). In his review of the movie in the Davar newspaper, Zeev Rav-Nof wrote that the other actors complement Avraham Halfi, "and most of them do so well…but best of all is Israel Segal in the role of Zabash. Segal is one of the most unappreciated actors in Israel. I enjoyed every minute of his performance and regretted that it was so short. The actors –mostly Halfi but also Segal, in no small measure, are the most perfect thing in the movie."

Israel Segal was married to Betty Segal, an actress at Ohel theater, for forty years. They lived on Gordon Street in Tel Aviv. He had Parkinson's disease for many years and his wife nursed him. About two years before they died they bequeathed their artistic estate to the Museum of Theater in Tel Aviv which had been founded by their colleague from Ohel, Yehudah Gabbai; in the museum there are plays, sketches and satires from the beginning of the 20^th century as well as articles in Yiddish about literature and theater that Segal published in the newspapers of camp survivors.

In the summer of 1985 his wife drowned at the Tel Aviv beach in a stormy sea when the lifesavers were not at work; her body was washed up the following morning at the Gordon beach. Following his wife's untimely death, he moved to his sister's. Five weeks later his condition worsened and he was hospitalized at the hospital where he died a week later. He was 78. He was buried alongside his wife at the southern cemetery.

source: Hamichlol