"The Theater Kept Us Safe": The Story of Lea Koenig-Stolper

Actress and Israel Prize winner Lea Koenig-Stolper was born in Poland in 1929. Her parents, Yosef Kamien and Dina Koenig, were well-known actors of the Yiddish stage in the interwar period. When the war broke out Lea was living with her mother in Chernivtsi (today Ukraine) which was occupied by the Soviets. They later moved to Chișinău (Rus. Kishinev), Moldova, where her mother was an actress with the Kishinev State Yiddish Theater. After the German invasion of the USSR in the summer of 1941, the two fled, together with the other theater members, to the Soviet hinterland, to the area of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. During their escape Lea experienced the horrors of the war and the incessant and destructive bombings of the German army. Lea's father, who had been in a different area of Soviet Ukraine when the war broke out, had also fled to the Soviet interior, but died in 1942. Her mother married Yitzhak Havis, an actor himself, and the two continued to appear on the theater stage throughout the war. After the war had ended, they settled in Bucharest, Romania, where they joined the city's Jewish theater. Lea also performed with this theater from an early age and attended Bucharest's National University of Arts. In 1961, she immigrated to Israel with her husband, Zvi Stolper, an actor and director, and a Holocaust survivor from Transnistria. After studying Hebrew, Lea joined the Habima National Theatre of Israel and was soon cast in starring roles. Over the years she also appeared on the screen in both television and cinema. Lea received many prizes and accolades, including the Israel Prize and the Israeli Theater Prize. She resides in Givatayim and continues to appear on stage.