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Maurice Schwartz
1890–1960
Actor-manager who founded New York’s Yiddish Art Theatre in 1918 and staged ’s Esterke — the 1940 production that first sang “Dona Dona.”
was born Avram Moishe Schwartz in 1890 in Volhynia (now Ukraine) and reached New York after a hard childhood that included a stretch alone in London. In 1918 he founded the Yiddish Art Theatre, aiming at a literary company rather than Second Avenue potboilers — Shakespeare and Sholem Aleichem on the same boards. He directed and acted there for more than three decades. In October 1940 he opened the season with Zeitlin’s Esterke, music by : a costume drama of the Polish Esterke legend, and the first home of the song later known as “Dona Dona.” He died in 1960.
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