To my mother and father

To my brothers Wolf and Gedalia

To my sister Golda

To all my family

To Białystok, my town

                   is this album dedicated

 ISRAEL BEKER  —  STAGE OF LIFE

©

All rights reserved to the family of Israel Beker of Blessed Memory

 

ברצוני להודות למר. משה בקר שהעניק לי את הכבוד הגדול להעלות לאינטרנט את אלבום "בימת חיי" של ישראל בקר, כחלק מאתר ההנצחה לקהילת  ביאליסטוק, עיר ואם בישראל אשר איננה עוד.  

    מאי 2007 עדה הולצמן

 

I wish to thank Mr. Moshe Beker from the bottom of my heart for granting me the great  honor of posting the album "Stage of Life" of his unforgettable father, Israel Beker of blessed memory.

Ada Holtzman

May 2007

 

 

1979, Tel Aviv, Israel

Photos: Israel Zafrir

Design: David Gafni

Printed in Israel by: United Artists Ltd., Tel Aviv

Set and binding: Keter Enterprise, Jerusalem

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

 

The publisher wishes to acknowledge his gratitude to the following:

Eitan Avnion, Aharon Becker, Aharon Dovrat, Arye Dulzin, Yona Ettinger, Nachum Fassa, Menucha & Moshe Gilboa, Arye Globerson, Baruch Gross, Yitzhak Harcavi, Ernest Japhet, Matitiahu Kalir, Akiva Lewinsky, Yaakov Macht, Shlomo Magriso, Shmuel Omer, Israel Pollak, Daniel Recanati, Baruch Rosen, Moshe Sanbar.

For their assistance in helping to realize the publishing of this album.

 

May they be blessed

Israel Beker

Tel Aviv, 15.3.79

This album is published in the frame of the 60th anniversary of the Habimah National Theatre of Israel with the assistance of:

The Jewish Agency.

Tel Aviv Foundation for Literature and Art.

The Jewish World Congress.

Friends of Habimah Circle.

Centre of Education and Culture near the Histadruth.

Bank Leumi Le — Israel

Israel Discount Bank

Association of Insurance Companies in Israel.

"Clal"  — (Israel) Ltd.

I knew the small wooden houses and the tiled roofs, red in summer and white in winter; the spacious yards behind the wooden fences; the crooked horses harnessed to limping carts. And better than all I knew our brethren the Jews who were there. I remembered the towns and villages with vibrant congrega­tions deeply rooted in Judaism and craving for a different world. To many of them it was a world rich with imaginative trivial desires. Out of this almost surrealistic reality grew the world reformers and all sorts of innovators and above all the dreamers and those who hoped for a different Jewish life.

 

Israel Beker, A pupil of this world absorbed the feelings of the beaten and the hunted, but also the feeling of national pride; he is anchored in the roots of Judaism but also in Universal culture. He, who absorbed all this, went through the Holocaust and remained alive, grew strong on the boards of the stage and adopted different ways of expression with a surfeit of creative vitality. The Jewish culture of Eastern Europe, which is no more, is imprinted in the soul of the artist, and once more becomes alive through his voice, from his paint brush and his pen.

 

Using these combined ways of expression Beker tells his own personal truth while remaining intertwined with the being of the national group.

 

We have known the artist for a few decades through his booming voice on stage; now we see his world through his writing and painting. Israel Beker is a sensitive artist with ability and power. In the process of his creativity the artist is an example of an increasing graph which preserves the happenings of the past without abandoning the present. Everything bursts out of him; colours and figures; and all of them carry a message.

 

For this cultural and artistic experience —  many thanks.

 

Prof. Arye Globerson

Winter 1979

 Tel Aviv University

 

I have lived in Israel a certain number of years. My temples are graying. I see my children growing up and my achievements, in deed and scope, heap one upon the other. Hundreds of acting roles, activity, a lifetime of experience, "sitting pretty" as it was. I can rest upon my laurels. Yet suddenly I step down from the place of honour and enter an entirely new field — painting.

 

I paint. I take a look into my inner self. I need this heart — rending search. I started painting because I was badly shaken, as if a moment of insight whis­pered in my ear "open your eyes". All those years I must have been walking very close to this point and suddenly it happened. I was lucky in that my hands responded to the challenge of painting, motivated by a tremendous will — al­most inhuman. In painting I can face myself — it is open. It is spontaneous­ — from my inner depth — without any artificiality or previous preparation. In the theatre I underwent a long period of learning, coaching and prepara­tion, which enabled me to persevere for over 45 years — up to this very day.

 

Maybe I cannot find the satisfactory repertoire which could speak for me. I knew — writing was not my line. I was afraid that I would be carried away to vengefulness, accusations, "settling accounts" with my fellowmen . . . I did not want it . . . I paint.

 

There is almost no demarcation line between the theatre and what I went through in life outside it — if it was not for that I would have never got to pain­ting.

 

Fields touch, mingle and intertwine. . .

 

My origin is Białystok. Do you know where that is? It was once a Jewish town between Warsaw and Minsk. A big town. If I had passed my childhood in a different place — my whole life would probably have been quite different. I am not from Białystok, I am a Bialistoker — that means a lot more. The street, the immediate neighbourhood — had a special significance for me. We lived in the tallest building of the town — a skyscraper of four and a half floors looking around with pride over all that went on below. It had two entrances — ­the main one, which had mirrors and red carpets running along the stairs, and the service entrance which lead to the kitchens, storage places and. . . to the most enchanting place in the house — the attic. As a child I toddled be­hind the maids, who used to hang the washing on the roof. That roof was used as a storage place for old furniture, and all sorts of odds and ends which were turned into toys. But the greatest joy was to peep through the portholes of the roof into the big city below us. Roofs — a sea of roofs in various forms and colours — roofs of synagogues and factories — the streets stretched far below­ — the people looked like dwarfs. Square and triangular roofs. The pointed roofs of the churches which hit the clouds. The factories' chimneys and the town clock which rose above all the rest. This is the Białystok I remember from our roof top.

 

I spent many years of my childhood with my grandfather — who lived in a small village near our town. It was called Knyszyn. Don't look for it on the map, you won't find it. It will not be marked even by a pinpoint, but it exist­ed — a small Jewish village. My grandfather was a farmer. He used to come to our town with his two fine horses harnessed to his cart. On his way home he used to take us — his grandchildren — to his village — his fields, orchard, stables, the enchanted forest, the flowing river nearby — in short, to mother nature. That is where I took refuge from the illness which distorted my legs, from the "HEDER" and the terrible striking hands of the "Rabbi" and from a house full of children.

 

I never spoke about it — but in my paintings I started revealing myself. I never told anybody about my escapes from home, about my wanderings with street singers, bear tamers, circus rope dancers — about a strange childhood which brought me ultimately to the theatre, to actors and ensembles —  same as in Shalom Aleichem's famous novel "Wandering Stars".

 

When I performed Tuvia The Dairy Man — one of the most remarkable figures in the Jewish repertoire — in the Jewish State Theatre of Kiev and in my own theatre — which was the central Theatre of the Liberated Jews in Germany after the second world war, I impersonated my grandfather as Tuvia — him Tuvia and myself became one — almost. . . not quite. . . The last lines in the play say: "As long as my soul is inside me, go on Tuvia, go on"... in an optimis­tic tone in the belief of a better tomorrow, which shines over the horizon. . . but. . . my grandfather was murdered in his own forest, where he tried to take refuge. Local gentile inhabitants killed him. Him, his sons, daughters — their children —  they are no more.

 

I returned to Białystok in the beginning of 1945. It was winter. All was cover­ed with heavy snow, that is — all that was once a town, streets and houses. Far away you could still hear the cannons booming, while fighting went on, and what used to be a living and vibrant town — a robe of silence spread. I walked through the ruins and started running toward the place where our house once stood. I knew I was in the right place. It was here. Remnants of walls. . . the arched gate. . . above me our balcony hanging in the air with the railing which I used to hang into for support because of my weak and ailing legs. I looked up, and for a split second imagined — here just in a moment my mother would appear — would stand and gaze around her at the town clock far beyond, the busy streets, the row of stores, one of which belonged to my father. . . I would reach up and take hold of her dress. . . I knew then that it was just a wild dream — that my imagination was playing tricks with me — they were gone. I stood among the debris and my whole life passed in front of me. The past, my home, everything. Then I started searching among the ruins, I turned bricks and iron bars — I found something which I never believed I would find — an enameled salt cellar which used to hang in our kitchen — on it was engraved in Gothic letters —  "SALZ"  — here is the evidence. If this salt cellar is in my hand, it proves that they existed once — because it seemed to me that they never existed — no father, no mother, no brothers or sisters — no home — no neighbourhood — all disappeared — and if so — then possibly I don't exist at all. . . I looked around because I felt that someone was watching me — most probably gentiles living in the neighbourhood — who wanted to know what this man, looking like a Jew, was looking for here. Most probably he came to look for a hidden treasure — their faces prophesied evil — I threw the salt cellar at them  — and fled.

 

I always run away. All my memories are full of escapes. Instinctive, almost animal impulses, their reason unknown to me. There is nothing easier for me than to get up and leave a place, to move to the unknown. Something tremen­dous throws me and I succumb easily. Possibly with an inside joy. Here is the command. This is my fate, it is final and I act accordingly. I know that if I am still alive and doing whatever I am doing, I am here and nowhere else ­it is only because I was always loyal to this command.

 

1939. Beginning of Second World War. I am in Lublin, Poland, with a band of actors. The Germans conquer the city, the way home, to Białystok is bar­red. In Lublin terror of the victorious Nazi armies prevails. I have to get to the border and cross it to join my family. I am on a train heading east. Sudden­ly a rumour is spread among the passengers — the Germans are aboard and are imprisoning Jews. Panic spreads — fear. The stories are known. Jews are taken out and shot. I looked out the window, the train was moving at high speed. I only knew one thing: I had to escape from this train — which was a rat trap for me. They were not going to get me —  I said to myself. I jumped out of the window, felt a terrific bang and rolled down the hill — the train was gone, I was badly hurt, but alive — saved.

 

In 1947 I wrote the script for the film "Long is the Way" in which I acted the main part — the part of young David Yellin — a displaced person on a train full of Jews from besieged Warsaw, heading into the unknown. I acted the jump from the train while remembering my own. My unfailing decision to remain alive, my experience in the forest and my encounter with this Chris­tian, Antony Militzky, who took me to his home, hid me and later on helped me to cross the Bug river — to safety.

 

This sensation that things happened and that people vanished without a trace  — as if erased and never part of this planet — this sensation does not leave me alone and enables me to carry on.

I try very hard to remember them — my whole family — but I cannot picture them — nor imagine what they looked like. They appear in my mind's eye as figures on top of figures — who blot and clarify each other. Only at rare mo­ments I find it possible to feel close to them. I had an overwhelming wish to paint my mother — but when I painted her I could not place the eyes. I was scared that she would look at me. While working on her painting I noticed that I looked away from her... maybe because I was ashamed of something... maybe at that very moment she was reproaching me — like when I was a child — and maybe we made peace between us at last. I certainly forgave her for everything. I wanted to be loved more than the others, but mother's love was equally distributed among all the children. I was cross with her then for refusing to accompany me to the train which took me to Moscow to join Mi­choels acting school.

She wanted me to stay at home with the family —  "whatever for is the wande­ring and being far away?" So she said and I? I wanted to escape, the earth burnt under my feet — we have nothing to do in this town... 20 miles away from the Germans — we have to leave and fast — and I run away once again.

 

I loved my father very much. Maybe because he was so patient with me. It was as if my escapades amused him. He was something of a bohemian. He was a cantor in the synagogue — a very prominent member of the community. He saw in me his follower. "The child has a wonderful voice", he said, "he is a scholar". "In two years he learnt by heart 80 pages of Talmud. What can we do with him — his head is full of nonsense — he wants to go to a modern school — have you ever heard of such folly?" I used to run away from home, to my grandfather in Knyszyn, on foot, a small child walking alone 20 miles. I knew the way very well — every little corner, hill and valley — and as evening fell I used to reach my destination, tired and exhausted — I am here. I used to stand and look at my grandparents straight in the eyes — and then was handed a glass of hot milk straight from the cow — and grandmother used to say "Look at that little imp — he is here again".

 

I turn the pages of my mind and paint as if haunted by the devil. I have a strong desire to paint, although I don't always know exactly what I am going to paint. The colours come as an expression of an internal joy or a terrible sad­ness. I cannot explain why I choose the colours and shades I use. An inner self guides me and shows me which colours to mix together. I start from a chaos of colours — colours chosen completely by chance and in this chaos the eye discerns suddenly — here is something which has happened to me in the past and then I start removing the surplus.

 

My first painting was of Shimele Soroker in the concentration camp at Da­chau. I played this part for many years. I loved this figure of the poor tailor who won the big prize in the lottery. I played Shimele in Poland in the M. I. K. T. (Musikalicher Idisher Kunst Theatre) which I founded with a group of liberated actors from the camps. Poland burnt under our feet. The Kielce pogrom was the first sign. After the war, after only a few were saved from the slaughter, they tried to go back to their destroyed homes, looking for relati­ves. The most ugly page in Poland's history was written — a pogrom on the victims of the Holocaust — their only crime was that they survived. Tens of Jews were beaten and were lynched. We run away. This time not alone but with the whole ensemble. The rescue command ("BRIHA") transferred us to the German — Polish border and from there to Berlin and then to the American zone of occupied Germany — Frankfurt and Munich. I saw them — those who had survived the death camps, those liberated from Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. The survivors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. We stood in a huge cemetery in a distorted world and it was quite clear — we, the actors, have nothing to say now. In a cemetery you cannot play theatre. They don't need us — they need something else — how can we give them hope and faith and the belief that they are alive? I remember Göttingen, the big central hospital for the libe­rated victims. The patients were brought into the central hall, where women, men, boys and children were gathered — in whose eyes we could discern a faint thread of life.

On the stage Shimele Soroker, by Shalom Aleichem. We sing and dance, but n our hearts the terrible doubt — we must shout a terrible and heartbreaking — rending cry for a people who is no more. . . For broken families, parents who lost everything (two of a town and one of a tribe). But Shimele Soroker won­ — we knew then that if we could bring a smile to a stricken face, if we could only hear a laugh from distorted lips — then we succeeded.

 

I left the Soviet Union. One morning I went to the police in Chernivtsi (now in Ukr., - Pol. Czerniowce), where I worked with the Jewish state theatre of Ukraine — I put my identity card on the officer's desk and I simply told him that I wanted to go back to Poland, where I was born, to look for my family. Within 24 hours I had a per­mit to leave Russia. In my heart of hearts I knew I had nothing to look for in Poland but I was determined to get out and quickly — before it was too late.

Was it a mysterious voice within me which prompted me to get up and move?

… just like it was then — years before in Lublin or in Białystok, when I cross­ed the border into independent Lithuania so as to get to Kaunas (Kowno) where a British certificate was waiting for me. It was sent by the Habima Theatre, which received me as a member while they were performing in Warsaw in 1938. From 400 candidates they chose two and I was one of them. They carried out their pro­mise and sent me an immigration certificate but not to Warsaw which was conquered by the Germans, but to Lithuanian Kaunas. I went to Kaunas in the end of December 1939. Winter. . . Heavy snow. I walked at night towards the border. . . alone. I was arrested — I sat in prison for 4 months. My family heard about my arrest and paid a lot of money to release me.

 

Would my dream come true? Would I get to be a member of the Habima? . . . And the "Habima" — the name of this legendary theatre is inscribed in my very being since my youth. "Habima" the Hebrew National Theatre was first established in my home town — Białystok. In 1912 Nahum Zemach founded the first "Habima" group who acted in Hebrew, and among its mem­bers was my uncle Morgan-Meir Inshatov -Guterman, my mother's eldest brother. The group went out to play in Vienna where the 11th Zionist Congress took place. And the "Habima" actors arrived there so as to bring before the delegates the tidings of the renewed Hebrew Art. To this "Habima"... The "Habima" which realized the dream of a National Theatre, I wanted to get in... I wanted with all my heart and soul — and I knew that if I'll want it very very much — with all the fibers of my soul and my will. . . I will achieve it.

 

In 1925 a very special guest visited Białystok. The "Hafetz Haim" (R' Israel Meir H'Kohen 1838-1933) spiritual leader of the Jews in Poland — who came to town to reawaken the scattered congregation. The day of his arrival became a joyful holiday. Thousands came out to greet him when he arrived by train and they harness­ed themselves to the carriage and carried him through the town. Gentiles stood open mouthed watching this procession and asked who the guest was. The answer was provocative and humorous —  "He is the king of the Jews". He was brought to Rabbi Grossman where he stayed. We lived then in the same house. During that week the nearby streets were full of people who came to see the holy man. On the last day of his stay at the Grossmans — the Rabbi's wife came to my mother and told her: "Miriam — come quickly, take the chil­dren, the holy man will bless them". My brothers and sisters disappeared and only I, holding my mother's hand, was taken into his room. What I remem­ber distinctly are his eyes. They were a deep blue, penetrating and pure. I approached him and then he asked me my name and I said — Israel.

"Israel", he said, "the whole of the people of Israel in one name! And what would you like to be when you grow up, what would you like to do?" "I don't know", I answered weakly, and then he said, "Now you don't know, but when you grow up you will be all that you want to be". This blessing stuck to me. I have thought about it for years and years — after all, it is the essence of my whole life. It encourages me in moments of doubt. If I really want some­thing, I can get it. The "Hafetz Haim" said so, to me. I put my trust in this blessing and it comes into my mind only then when it is terribly hard for me, when I stand on a crossroad, when I have a very daring and difficult decision to make.

 

It was always clear to me from the very beginning, that if I shall paint my in­timate life, it will always have a taste of the theatre and if I shall take the figures from the theatre and paint them, they will become realistic, real figures from life itself. This fact I discovered when I started painting Oberon — King of the forest, in Midsummer Night Dream, my first role in the Habima. I never saw what the stage on which I was acting looked like. I could allow my imagi­nation to run away with me and not to be bound to facts or reality. I dreamt the scenery according to Shakespeare, a dream world of a forest of deep green and blue, with huge sunflowers, small grey forest creatures and Oberon all in green, next to his lady —  Titania. Did I paint Shakespeare's forest? Are these the forest of Greece, which I have never seen, nor walked in? This is my fo­rest, my grandfather's forest where we, the grandchildren, walked behind our grandmother like chicks after the bent mother hen, who picks forever among the bushes and collects black-berries and red currents and the forest echoed to our joyous shouts and was filled with sounds and music.

 

I joined Habima in 1948 — 10 years after that fatal walk to the Lithuanian bor­der. I stayed in Germany for 3 years and was the artistic director of the Central Theatre for the liberated Jews. During those years I acted and directed plays, completed the film "Long is the Road"  — the first Jewish film about the destruction of the Polish Jews and their yearning for salvation. And then I suddenly cut myself free and decided to leave Germany and come to Eretz Israel (then Pales­tine) as soon as possible, so that I would not be too late for something which I really wanted very much. This was after Exodus, the ship which arrived in Haifa and was sent back to the D. P. (Displaced Persons) Camps in Germany. I wanted to be one of them — to share their fate.

The Jewish Agency did me a favour and put me on a transport which made its way from Germany to France and from there illegally to Palestine. With a forged passport in Willy Hirsch's name — I embarked on the "Kedma", which made its way to Palestine. On its deck were 1.000 passengers — volun­teers from different countries — Americans, English, French, Canadians and the homeless — like me. I stood on the ship's deck and gazed upon the dimi­nishing coast of France. A storm was expected. I took out the key of my apart­ment in Munich, held it in my hand for a moment, and let it drop into the deep sea. . .

That was the end of Europe for me. I did not take a thing with me when I boarded the ship, not even my name, except memories.

 

*

 

Tel Aviv's seashore has a special attraction for me. The promenade, sand and beyond the sea, the horizon. Sometimes I stand for hours watching the sea beyond the horizon. . . far. . . far away I would like to return to? I met him, the old balloon peddler, many a time, sitting on a bench in front of the sea holding his stick and his colourful balloons. There I stand and gaze just like him, and inside me I know that all that is reality. I brought here my memories, my past. I paint the old balloon peddler, a rare incident brought this very figure into the theatre. First in a committee to support local dramaturgia. I read a manuscript of a play by Ben Zion Tomer and in it a wonderful revela­tion. Two wonderful and expressive figures — Dr. Zigmund Rabinowich the ex-collaborator and an old balloon peddler who meets him on the sea­shore.

I have directed numerous plays both in Habima and abroad. I have produced films and television programmes. The plays about the holocaust were the greatest challenge to me . . . I had to find ways and means of approaching the audience, who was never there and what it represented to those specta­tors who survived it.

Not once did we have the feeling that we were standing on the brink of an open abyss with no bottom, endless, and would never reach the terrible truth. The theatre will not be able to cope with the subject of the holocaust in the way it is expressed through poetry, music, movement and painting on the one side, and the historical document on the other side. In my film "Long is the Road" I approached the truth because most of my actors were victims of the holocaust. It was achieved through the integration of the historical document more than a thousand extra's prisoners of the D. P. camps, authentic loca­tions and the cinema fiction in simple dimensions.

I paint the holocaust as it arises before my eyes, from stories of survivors, from research books. I try to see my parents and my whole family at that pe­riod. How did they live in the Ghettos? What really happened to them? I only saw the Germans come in and I ran away. But they? They were there till the end... I search and search inside myself as if I wanted to be with them in those terrible moments.

When I visited the U. S. A. I met one survivor who knew my family and who saw them in the Ghetto. . . Yes. . . until the end. . . Once, he told me, my father told him: "It is good that Israel is far away from all this in a safe place. If he is lucky, he will be saved." And I paint pictures and turn my head away because I cannot look at them, and I continue painting as if cutting into my flesh and I know that I have to do it, that I must do it.

 

The day after the liberation of the Wailing Wall, after the Six Day War — the Habima actors came to Jerusalem and were allowed to go into the Old City and the Wailing Wall. We were there with hundreds of Israelis to see the rem­nants of the holy place. People cried and rejoiced, prayed and danced. I was not alone there, they stood in front, on my right and behind me — all those who never made it — all those who stayed behind and were not privileged. My parents, brothers and sisters, all my relatives from a very big family and the blessing of the "Hafetz Haim" echoing in my heart.

 

*

 

It is a story in colours and canvases. It is not the events which got mixed up inside of me. Them, I remember clearly. Colours are intermingling within life and they have claims on life, claims of their own.

To you, dear spectator, who is following my life as an actor on the stage, I present in this album the stage of my life.

Not entirely, of course. . . part of it, fragments, pieces of memories, pictures . . . "A flower to the world" who endowed me with this terrible and wonderful life.

Translated by Carmella Cohen