Vilna During the Holocaust

Twenty-one and One More

Shabtai-Shepsel Blecher
Shabtai-Shepsel Blecher with friends
Genia-Gitl Blecher-Szapiro
A theatre production in the Vilna Ghetto

Shabtai Blecher, an actor in the State Yiddish Theatre in Vilna, was one of the initiators of the ghetto theatre and a central actor within it. Among the activities initiated by the Judenrat in the ghetto, Blecher wrote the life stories of his fellow performers that had died during the first year of German occupation. Blecher penned dozens of biographies of artists that had been murdered in Ponary, as well as a biography of an actor who had died of typhus in the ghetto. In September 1943, during the liquidation of the ghetto, Blecher was sent with other Jews from Vilna to the Klooga camp in Estonia, where he was murdered.

In September 1943, the biographical pages Blecher had written were found rolling along the street by Boleslaw Boratynski, who passed them onto the Etingen family whom he was hiding in his home. The title page was not among them.

In 1962, Blecher's writings were published in New York in their original language, Yiddish. The book's editors added to the twenty-one biographies Blecher had composed one more biography – that of Blecher himself. They called the work Twenty-one and One More.