THE DISAPPEARANCE

Shamay Golan was born in Poland in 1933.
During World War II the Germans expelled Shamay Golan and his family along with other Jews from their hometown. After years of moving from place to place Golan wound up in the Soviet Union… in Siberian exile. In 1946 Golan returned to Poland, and in 1947 he moved to Israel on the eve of the formation of the new Israeli state.
Golan spent time in a kibbutz and graduated from the history and literature department of the Jewish University in Jerusalem. Then he taught literature and founded the House of Writers in Jerusalem, which he headed for nine years. He was several times elected to the post of chairman of the Union of Israeli Writers. Golan was awarded many literary prizes, including the Agnon Award and the Prime Minister's Prize.
Golan's works include novels and collections of stories such as The Last Guard, The Victims, The Marriage Shroud, Man, Woman and War, Sprint, and The Ambush. He edited the anthology The Catastrophe of the Jewish People. Shamay Golan has also authored a number of plays for the radio and articles on issues concerning Israeli and world literature. He served as Israeli cultural advisor to Russia from 1996 till 1999.
Golan's stories have been translated into Russian, English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Polish and other languages. His novel The Marriage Shroud was published in 1996 after appearing in Znamya magazine, and his novel Man, Woman and War appeared in 1998.

"… just a few years after I came to Israel as a boy, who had escaped from the fascists during World War II, I decided that if I became a writer, I would only write about my new life in the new land. I decided to purge suffering and pain from my memory along with mourning for my lost parents, the persecution and humiliation of Jews. I decided that I would write about the new Jewish state… I wanted to write the epic of the Jewish people's renaissance after one third had been exterminated by the fascists. I wanted to write about the "sabers" whom I revered in particular because they were free people completely unfamiliar with that world from which their parents had come, with the world of the diaspora, pogroms and camps. 'That's what I should write about!' I told myself. 'Write about them and you'll become like them. It will help you to forget the horrors of the Catastrophe in Poland. The life of a refugee in Russia, the death of father and mother, the years of starvation, longing for motherly love and the stern voice of my father promising certain protection.' I want to forget my childhood as an orphan, but when I started writing it didn't turn out as I had planned. Everything I had tried to forget bled through into my works. All those memories I had tried to forget learned to breathe and speak, took on new form and new meaning…"

Shamay Golan
From the Foreword to the novel The Marriage Shroud

This performance received assistance from the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation)

The theatre would like to thank the following for their contribution to this performance: Maria Rolnikaite, Yury Dovner, Anna Ogibina and Anna Itskovich, and also the St. Petersburg Jewish Community Center, the Hesed Abraham Charity Center, and young artists from the regional public organization Aidan Lo.