José Maurer

Born Yoshe Maurer Neumann on May the 6th 1906 in the town of Boryslav, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, later annexed to Poland and nowadays in the Ukraine, Maurer was the son of the local cobbler and known in the city as an amateur violinist, actor and singer. When the famous Vilnius Jewish Theatre, under the direction of Zygmunt Turkow visited Boryslav in 1922, the 16 year old Yoshe was offered a minor role. Two weeks later, as the Theatre left, so did Yoshe, never to return to his hometown. As a member of this famous Yiddish Theatre he toured Poland until 1927, when he emigrated to Argentina. In Buenos Aires he became one of the leading actors in the Jewish Yiddish Theatre, playing along such renown actors as Joseph Buloff, Maurice Schwartz, Jacob Ben-Ami and many others. He was regarded as a first class "character" (drama) actor and as a "tour De force" used to change leading roles, e.g. playing with Jacob Ben-Ami both parts of Man and Devil in "Got, Mentsch Und Taivel", the famous Yiddish version of Faust by Jacob Gordin, night after night. On the other hand he had a gift for Comedy and took part in many musical comedies. In the late forties he was elected President of the "Jewish Actors Guild in Argentina" and served in this post for more than 20 years, until his emigration to Israel. He was a notable co-star in many Argentinean films, specializing in "foreign" accents and played the Spanish Argentinean stage, among others, with Berta Singerman. In 1963 he moved to Israel where he played the Yiddish stage and was elected there too as President of the Yiddish Actor's Guild until his death. His lifelong wish dream was to die on stage and this he did. In 1968, shortly after the curtain went down, and still wearing the makeup on his face, he had a stroke and died shortly afterwards, aged 62. His collection of manuscript plays, including translations into Yiddish of modern Argentinean drama, was donated to the Bar Ilan University and is now part of the Rena Costa Center for Yiddish Studies.