Moisey Goldblat

Moisey Goldblat was born in 1896 in Hertsa

Goldblat was born on 16 December 1896 in Hertsa, then in Romania. He studied in a cheder and a Romanian primary school. As a teenager he joined a traveling Jewish troupe from Galați.

He served in the Romanian army during World War I and fled to Soviet Russia in 1917. From 1918 to 1921 he acted in a touring Jewish theatre in Ukraine. In 1924 he graduated from the studio of the Moscow State Jewish Theatre under Alexei Granovsky, and he worked there as an actor and teacher until 1937.

In 1929 he took charge of a group of young Romani performers. In 1931 he founded the Indo-Romen theatre studio, later the Romen Theatre, and led it until 1936, staging plays in the Romani language. In 1935 he co-directed the film The Last Camp with Yevgeny Shneider.

From 1937 to 1939 he was artistic director of the Birobidzhan State Jewish Theatre, and in 1939 he became head of the Kiev State Jewish Theatre. From 1941 to 1944 he also led the Kazakh State Drama Theatre, and he returned to that post from 1951 to 1959. Until 1969 he acted at the Russian theatre in Kharkiv.

In 1972 he immigrated to Israel and settled in Haifa. He died there in 1974 and was buried in the Sde Yehoshua cemetery.