Art is My Weapon: The Radical Musical Life of Lin Jaldati

'In 1934, at 22 years of age and one year after Hitler came to power in Nazi Germany, Lin Jaladati, the stage name for Rebekka Brilleslijper, gave her first performance of Yiddish some and dance for the immigrant Jewish community of her native 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-garde festival, The Days of Yiddish Culture. Two parts passionate music, one part stunning images, one part inspiring story, Art is My Weapon tells the life and work of this remarkable woman.' 

This performance forms part of a wider project by David Shneer, an author and professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His scholarship is brought to life through his curatorial and performance work. To learn more about this and other projects go to www.davidshneer.com. This particular 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.

 Art is My Weapon: The Radical Musical Life of Lin Jaladati (PDF , 404kb)