Jan Schwartz

The Yiddish Mime Jan Schwartz

Chaja's life was filled with color, glitter, passion, and romance, but her art meant everything to her. At first, all that mattered was to be a star. After Hitler became the chancellor of Germany, she escaped to Holland. From there, her career took her throughout the world. This is the story of Chaja Goldstein, a cabaret star whose work was rich in Jewish culture and frank about the pogroms and discrimination the community faced. As the Yiddish Mime, she used her performances as a vehicle to personally communicate with her audience about Jewish culture and being the Other. In a broader sense, she fought against fascism by touching the hearts of her fans as intolerance began to dominate most of Europe. In 1942, she was transported to Westerbork Transit Camp from where nearly all of the revolving inmates were transferred to Auschwitz. She was saved as fate has it. The Commandant needed her talent for his very own cabaret. This is not a typical holocaust novel. The characters of this novel were actual friends and members of the hunted intelligentsia. They faced the rise of fascism together in pre-World War II Europe through the culmination of the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands that took the lives of 107,000 souls.