Album Notes

Chayela Rosenthal(1924-1979) “Songstress of Hope,” rose to fame as the beloved teenage Star of the Vilna Ghetto Theater during the Nazi occupation of Vilna, Lithuania.
Playing key roles in the cultural resistance of the Holocaust, Chayela and her older brother,lyricist Leyb Rosenthal, created and performed original satirical revues and uplifting songs to boost the morale of their fellow Vilna Ghetto inmates from 1942-3. She made famous Leyb’s classic songs, Yisroilik, (#4) about a typical young ghetto orphan boy who becomes a tough, hustling street urchin just to survive, and the nostalgic Ich Benk Aheym - I Long For Home (#8). Chayela kept singing for the remaining few Vilna Jews transported into concentration labor camps in Estonia after the ghetto was liquidated in September, 1943. Barely surviving the Death March and typhus, she performed a special tribute concert in Lodz in May, 1945 in honor of her brother, murdered in Estonia\'s Klooga camp. After liberation, she married a fellow Vilna Holocaust survivor, Xavier Piat, and joined the Yiddish State Theatre, entertaining refugees in the Displaced Persons’ camps in Poland and Germany. American Yiddish star, Molly Picon, visiting postwar Europe, was so impressed by Chayela\'s performance, she convinced the famous impresario, Sol Hurok to help the young Yiddish actress leave Communist Poland for the freedom of the west. Following a successful audition in Warsaw, Hurok engaged Chayela for cabaret gigs in Paris, France. There, in 1949, she recorded these vintage songs remastered for this cd. A 1950 theatrical tour of South Africa led to her decision to make her new home in Cape Town, where she raised 2 daughters, both of whom work in the entertainment/education business. Adored by audiences worldwide for her authentic warm Yiddishkeit that underscored her comedic cabaret acts, acclaimed for her guest appearances with Jacob Jacobs’s Yiddish theatre at the Billy Rose Theatre on Broadway, Chayela succumbed to cancer at age 55, after completing her swansong role in Cape Town as the quintessential Golda in the “Fiddler on the Roof.” Her life story is portrayed by her daughter Naava Piatka in her acclaimed one-woman show: “Better Don’t Talk!” (www.naava.com)