The chances that a child of impoverished Polish Jews from a shtetl in Russia-occupied Poland - a child born in 1908 and only several years before the world around her imploded in a catastrophe known as the First World War and pogroms that followed its end - would one day stand on stage in Berlin and Amsterdam, enchanting her public with a rare mix of humour, talent and gentle mocking of her parents’ Orthodox Judaism, were slim.
Thankyou for this story. So many stories like this. Such is the burden of history.