Born in Dvinsk
(Daugavpils), Latvia, he received a traditional Jewish education. At
the age of nine he wrote and produced a Yiddish play. In 1905 his
father went bankrupt and the family moved to Riga, Latvia, and in
1915 he began to study law in St. Petersburg, Russia, but gave this
up in 1918 to join Alexander Granovsky's Jewish drama studio. In
1920 the studio moved to Moscow, Russia, where Granovsky and
Mikhoels set up the State Jewish Theater. He was its chief actor and
in 1928, its director. His outstanding roles included Tevye the
Milkman and King Lear. In 1942 Mikhoels was appointed chairman of
the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee which appealed for Jewish support
from abroad for the Soviet struggle against the Germans. He himself
visited England, North America and Mexico to reinforce the appeals.
At the end of World War II he became the spokesman for Russian Jews
returning from their wartime refuge in Soviet Asia. Stalin, who had
relented during the war on his disapproval on contacts between
Russian Jews and those in other countries, now altered his policies
and started a campaign of killing Jewish leaders. Mikhoels was the
first to die; he was killed in a car crash in Minsk, later known to
have been maneuvered by the Soviet secret police.
Bibliography:
VOVSI-MIKHOELS, Nataliia. Moi otets Solomon
Mikhoels: (vospominaniia o Zhisni i gibeli) Pp. 279, [12] leaves
of plates: ill. Tel-Aviv: [S.N.] (Tipogr. "Iakov-Press"), 1984
VOVSI-MIKHOELS, Nataliia. Avi Shelomoh
Mikha'els : hayav u-moto shel ´sahkan Yehudi (me-Rusit,
mi-ketav-yad Menahem Ben-Iyar). Pp. 183. Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts
ha-me'uhad : Agudat ha-sofrim ha-`Ivrim, 1982/3
LIUBOMIRSKII, Ovsei (Yeshua). Af di
lebnsvegn : fartseykhnungen. Pp. 246. Moskve: Sovetski Pisotel,
1976.
GOLDENBERG Mikhail. Zhizn´ i sud´ba
Solomona Mikhoelsa: dokumenty, stenogrammy, vystupleniia, pis´ma.
Pp. 110 : ill. Baltimor, SShA: Informatsionnoe agentstvo "Vestnik",
c1995.
GEIZER, Matvei.
Mikhoels: zhizn´ i smert´. Pp. 319, [64].
Moskva: [Zhurnalistskoe agentstvo "Glasnost´"], 1998.
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