The voice of the Vilnius nightingale comes to life in a new exhibition in Cape Town
A mobile exhibition dedicated to the life story of the famuos singer Chayela Rosenthal (1924-1979) has opened at the Holocaust and Genocide Center in Cape Town on June 18, 2023.
The career of actress and singer Chayela Rosenthal began in pre-war Vilnius and continued in the Vilnius ghetto theater. After surviving the incredible tragedy of the Holocaust, she started life anew in South Africa and later became a Broadway star.
The exhibition explores Chayela's pre-war life and her extraordinary story of survival and resistance, explores Chayela's connections with YIVO, her post-war career in Paris, Cape Town, New York, and her enormous contribution to international Yiddish theatre.
The Vilnius Ghetto Theater poster exhibition prepared by the Vilnius Gaon Lithuanian Jewish History Museum at the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Center provides a fitting background to tell the story of just one family.
Speaking at the opening of the exhibition, Dainius Junevičius, the Ambassador of the Republic of Lithuania to the Republic of South Africa, told the audience about the concert of the Chayela's daughter, Naava Piatka, organized 20 years ago in the premises of the former Vilnius ghetto theater by the former chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Culture Club, a theater expert prof. Markas Petuchauskas, one of the signs of revival of Jewish culture in independent Lithuania.
The Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in South Africa is a partner of this mobile exhibition. The exhibition is a solemn reminder that the Vilnius ghetto was destroyed 80 years ago and is dedicated to the upcoming Memorial Day of the Victims of the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews.
Full opening address of Ambassador D. Junevičius
