Only a few years after Sigmund Freud received the Goethe Prize for his contribution to psychology and German culture, the Nazis rose to power and began attacking prominent Jewish intellectuals, with Freud’s books prominently burned in mass rallies. Following the annexation of Austria in 1938, anti-Semitism in Vienna became openly acceptable, and violent. After several visits from the Gestapo to their Vienna home, Freud and his family left Austria for London in 1938. His four sisters died in concentration camps. In 1993 the Jewish Museum Vienna exhibited the photographs of Freud’s apartment and practice recorded by Edmund Engelmann shortly before the family’s emigration, which had around 1970 made possible a reconstruction of the rooms as a museum.
“Yidl mitn Fidl” (Yiddle With His Fiddle) is one of four masterpieces shot by director Joseph Green while he was still in Poland. Apart from “Mamele” (1938, also by Green), this was the only Yiddish film in which Molly Picon, the undisputed star of Yiddish theater, had a speaking and singing role.»more