She was nominated for an Academy Award and was the first female director in the interwar period in Poland. As of this year the Jewish Artistic Theater, which has recently celebrated its 60th anniversary, has been named after actress Ida Kamińska.

Kamińska descended from a well-known family of actors. "She continues to be a symbol of a great actress and stage manager," said Israeli Ambassador David Peleg, who attended the unveiling ceremony of a commemorative plaque for Kamińska at the Nowy Theater in Łódź. "She is an example to actors and theaters in Israel. Although she was born in Odessa (in 1899) and died in New York (1980), she spent most of her adult life in Poland."

The outstanding Polish actor and director Gustaw Holoubek also remembers Kamińska fondly: "I saw her on stage many times. Ida was a great actress-not only by the standards of the theater she represented, Jewish theater, but by national standards. She played and spoke both excellent Yiddish and Polish. She was one of those actresses who are timeless. She gave the artistic world her own style-subdued and intimate. This is what her talent was like."

She was connected with theater since her childhood and started her career alongside her parents: Avram Izhak Kamiński and Ester Rachel Halpern. She debuted at 17 in the theater which her parents established in Warsaw. After 1933 she managed her own theater company. Later, together with her husband, Turow, Ida established Warszawer Jidiszer Kunstteater, which was later dissolved. The company played on provincial stages and then performed in Belgium and France. At this time, Ida became the manager of the Kamińskis' theater in Warsaw as its co-owner. She organized an alternative company which also performed in Warsaw. In 1937, she received a grant from the Association of Jewish Performing Artists "for the greatest achievement in Jewish theater in Poland in recent years." The Association was referring to the performance based on Max Bauman's historical play Glikl Hameln Demands Justice.

Having signed a contract for five years in 1938, Kamińska took over the management of Nowości Theater in Warsaw. Like her mother, she played in Yiddish films. After the outbreak of World War II, she worked in the State Jewish Theater in Lviv. A year later, under pressure from Soviet authorities, she resigned from the post of manager. In June 1941, she escaped further east but did not give up her work, acting in a theater in Frunze (then Soviet Kirgiz Republic) and establishing a Jewish theater company that performed in the cities of Soviet Central Asia. Having returned to Poland in 1947, she worked in Jewish theaters in Wrocław and other cities. Since 1948 for five years she managed the Jewish Theater in Łódź where she prepared as many as 35 premiere performances. It was in this theater that Kamińska celebrated 35 years as an actress.

"I must say that Ida was also an excellent mother. In the 1950s, she did everything she could and removed her daughter from a Stalinist camp," said Szymon Szurmiej, an actor, theater director and director of Warsaw's Jewish Theater since Kamińska's emigration.

In 1955, Kamińska became director of the State Jewish Theater in Warsaw, which was named after her mother. The theater won recognition and renown in Poland and abroad. The company performed in France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, East Germany and North and South America.

She also acted in several films. In 1967, she was nominated for an Academy Award for a supporting role in the Czech film Obchod na korze (The Shop on Main Street.) The film was awarded in the best-foreign film category.

Unfortunately, in August 1968, as a result of the increasingly anti-Semitic policies of communist authorities, the artist emigrated to the United States. She tried to set up a Yiddish Theater there with the help of the Friends of the Ida Kamińska Association but without success. She wrote then: "I have everything here except work."

"I witnessed her departure from Poland," said Holoubek. "We bid her farewell on behalf of the Association of Polish Performing Artists. It was a very moving scene. She was in utter despair that she had to leave Poland, as a person expelled from her homeland." During her stay abroad, Kamińska wrote her memoirs, My Life, My Theater (New York, 1973), translated into Polish 22 years later.

Since the beginning of the year, the Jewish Theater on Grzybowski Square has been named after Ester Rachel Kamińska and Ida Kamińska. "In this way we want to return to tradition, to outstanding Jewish classic plays," commented Szurmiej. Ida's son, Wiktor Melman, is particularly satisfied with this decision. "In 1999, that is on the 100th anniversary of my mother's birth, in a letter sent to Director Szurmiej and copied to the Warsaw City Board and the Ministry of Culture, I proposed adding Ida's name to the name of the theater, in addition to my grandmother's name," said Melman, who lives in the United States. "Later, I discussed this with Szymon Szurmiej, who accepted the idea. Why didn't it happen earlier? I've no idea. But it's good that it did. After all, my mother was the founder of the theater and had managed it for many years. It was thanks to her efforts and prestige that the existing beautiful building of the Jewish Theater was built, a theater in which she didn't have an opportunity to perform."

Ida Kamińska:
• acted in a total of 124 roles
• wrote two plays
• translated 58 plays into Yiddish
• directed 65 performances