The Katzet Theater:  Tears and Death; Hopes and Dreams in a DP camp

In the first few months after the liberation, Holocaust survivors tried to process their new reality. For years they witnessed death almost daily. For years they could only focus on their immediate physical survival. They never had the time or energy to think about the fate of their family, friends and community. They did not rejoice when they were liberated. Instead, they were crushed by all that they had lost.

From the end of 1945, tens of thousands of survivors started to gather in the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp. Some of them understood that they no longer had a home to return to at all or any remaining family members with whom to continue their lives in their hometown. Out of the ashes, the loss and the bereavement, they struggled to find the will to live. Some found purpose or meaning in the theater. One of the survivors who found a haven in the theater was the actor and director aged thirty-six named Sami Feder.

Feder was an actor and director before the war. He was born in Poland but grew up in Germany, where he was an active member of the Zionist youth movement “Blau Weiss.” He also acted in the local Yiddish theater. He wrote and directed satires on Hitler, so when the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s, Feder escaped to Poland, where he continued to produce anti-Nazi plays.

After the German invasion, Feder was imprisoned in the Bedzin Ghetto, and even there he was active in the theater. During the Holocaust years, he was transferred between twelve concentration camps and was finally liberated in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Feder spent two years in the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp, and towards the end of 1945, he established the "Katzet Theater" there, "Katzet" being an abbreviation of the German word for "concentration camp." Feder nicknamed the theater “the Art of the Clenched Fist”. The first performance was on September 10th 1945. Thousands of spectators crowded into the hall, far beyond its capacity. An eyewitness recounted:

“The actors performed with tears and blood, with self-sacrifice and love. They didn't need to pretend: they were playing their own real lives as they had lived them in the Nazi camps, in the ghettos, in the forests, persecuted like stray dogs. It was a new universe, a new theatrical reality. They pulled me along with them into a valley of tears, death, mud, and sickness... and a minute later they lifted me up to their hopes and dreams.”

The actors, former prisoners, presented a reality that was still fresh in their memories: they wore yellow badges, prisoner uniforms, and acted out scenes from the camps. "We made the makeup for our faces from burnt matchsticks," one said. And yet, the actors did not succumb to despair and victimhood. They emphasized their struggle, their resistance, and the power of memory and commemoration. At Feder's initiative, they drew a line between the culture that was lost in the Holocaust and the future: alongside plays about the Holocaust, they also staged classic Yiddish plays. The audience showed their appreciation with cigarette butts, which were a rare commodity.

In the DP camp, Feder found himself a romantic partner: Sonia Boczkowska-Lizaron, a native of Lodz. She both acted in the theater and sang in the choir alongside Feder in the Bedzin Ghetto. From there they were deported to the Annaberg concentration camp, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen, and subsequently to Mauthausen. Even in concentration camps, Sonia sang for her fellow prisoners. In January 1945, she was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she was liberated in April.

Sonia collected the texts for the plays staged by the Katzet Theater from the camp's hospital. She went from bed to bed among the hospitalized Holocaust survivors, listened to their stories and songs, and wrote them down to create a repertoire for the new theater. She traveled by bicycle throughout the displaced persons camp, searching among the thousands of survivors for people with suitable skills to perform in the theater, even those who had never been on a stage before, and invited them to participate in the new theater. She herself acted in the theater, sang, and recited songs, many of them in Yiddish, thus preserving them. In 1946, Feder published the songs that Sonia helped collect in a book, "Zamlungen fun Katzet un Ghetto Lider": a collection of songs from the camp and the ghetto.

“By 1947, the theater had staged seven plays and ten musicals. They restaged these performances dozens of times for thousands of people, residents of the camp, and also performed at the local hospital,” Dr. Ella Florsheim wrote in her book Words Reaching for Life: Yiddish Culture in the Displaced Persons Camps (p. 189). “The considerable efforts that Feder and his group invested in staging the performances did not go unnoticed by the audience in Bergen-Belsen. … In the camp newspaper, it was written:

“The whole performance reached a respectable artistic standard. If we further consider what raw materials and what difficulties the director and the company had to overcome for even the smallest thing, only then will we understand the magnitude of the gift that the company bestowed upon the Jewish population in Bergen-Belsen.”

In 1947 the Katzet Theater launched a theater tour across various displaced persons camps and across Eastern Europe. A few months later, the Theater disbanded.

Sami and Sonia settled in Paris, but Sonia who grew up in a Bundist household and by extension, was a Yiddish enthusiast, did not share Sami’s Zionist dream. She pursued a broad and rich musical career and when Sami decided in 1962 to emigrate to Israel, they split up. Sonia moved to New York where she continued her musical career. She performed across the United States and Canada, even performing in Australia. In the albums she recorded throughout her career, Sonia incorporated songs she sang in the Katzet Theater, and in every place she lived and performed in, she brought her compositions from the DP theater - songs and stories.

Sami married Devorah, who he also met in Bergen-Belsen, and moved with her to Israel, where Sami worked at a printing house. Sami died in 2000.

The scholar of theater Dr. Zlata Neta Zaretsky wrote on the Katzet Theater: “The hidden inner freedom, the heroism in silence, the ambiguous language of masks, the precise and humane drama therapy, the provocative characters designed to create a direct connection with the audience – all of these are the legacy of Sami Feder's Katzet Theater.”

In the mid-1990s, around four years before Feder passed away, Dr. Zaretsky visited Sami in his home. Zaretsky earned her doctorate in 1983 from the Institute for the Study of the Arts next to the Academy of the USSR and in December 1990, after the dissolution of the USSR, emigrated to Israel. “Sami gave me everything from the moment I entered his house,” Dr. Zaretsky explained. “Books and photos connected to the theater.”

How did it all begin?

“I was already a historian of the theater in Moscow. I researched theater in the Holocaust. Sami spoke to me from a place of deep pain. In 2000, after Sami died, I immediately visited Devorah in their home. Devorah told me: “whatever you want to take, feel free to take.” I didn’t have time. I had a car parked outside so whatever I could, I took. I didn’t even see what I took. I rescued these materials. Only after I returned home did I sort through all the materials and brought to the theater archive named after Israel Gur. Sami Feder was also a journalist in Bergen-Belsen, once he was liberated. Everything that he had managed to gather, I brought straight to Yad Vashem. My research topic and primary interest was art. I didn’t even know what I had gathered.”

“I saw other things in Devorah’s home, but I couldn’t take everything. Devorah was immersed in her grief, and I had to leave.”

“They didn’t have children.”

Zaretsky rescued hundreds of photos of the Katzet Theater from the DP camp. She recounts that she has a recording of the Katzet Theater from 1947. She calls it a “voice of truth. People played the truth of the Holocaust on stage.”

Why did they give these recordings specifically to you?

“I was in contact with them before. I published information about Sami Feder in my first book in 1997, after I interviewed him. I published information about Feder in the Russian press worldwide.”

Dr. Zaretsky gave the photographs to the Yad Vashem Archives. I requested Zaretsky’s permission to publish some of these photographs. She responded immediately, without any hesitation:

“Of course! We must! It belongs to all of us.”