In 1934, at 22 years of age and one year after Hitler came to power in Nazi Germany, Lin Jaldati, the stage name for Rebekka Brilleslijper, gave her first performance of Yiddish song and dance for the immigrant Jewish community of her Amsterdam.
In 1988, one year before the Berlin Wall fell, she gave her final concert in that city divided by the Cold War as part of East Germany's new avant-grade festival, The Days of Yiddish Culture. Two parts passionate music, one part stunning images, one part ispiring story, Lin Jaldati: Art is My Weapon tells the life and work of this remarkable woman.
From David Shneer's personal website: "This project tells the story of Lin Jaldati, a Dutch Jewish Communist cabaret performer in the 1930s, Nazi death camp survivor, postwar immigrant to East Germany, and global Yiddish singing sensation until her death in 1988. Shneer examines how Jaldati’s Yiddish music and her compelling biography made her one of if not the key player in shaping Holocaust memory in East Germany, where Soviet-inspired Communist cultural politics about war commemoration intersected with the fact of Germany’s role as the perpetrator of war crimes. Jaldati’s Yiddish music sat at that intersection."
Lin Jaldati
Lin Jaldati: Trümmerfrau der Seele (Hentrich: Berlin, 2014)
A short biography of Lin Jaldati, born as Rebekka Brilleslijper, the Dutch Jewish, Yiddish-singing, Holocaust survivor, who moved to East Berlin in 1952 and became the Yiddish diva of the Communist world.
by David Shneer, Jalda Rebling, Joseph Rebling
