A Brivele Der Mamen / A Little Letter To Mama (1939 Polish Yiddish Classic) (Full Subtitled Movie)

A Brivele der Mamen (A Little Letter to Mother) was one of the last films made in Poland before the Nazi invasion. It stars Lucy Gehrman as a merchant mother desperately trying to keep her family together. It is both a tribute to the strong-willed matriarch and a loving portrait of shtetl life during early 20th century Polish Ukraine. Its story of loss, family disintegration and poverty serves director Joseph Green as a metaphor for the displacement and difficulties faced by Europeans. Jews in 1939. A Brivele der Mamen premiered to a packed audience at New York’s Belmont Theater on September 14, 1939, two weeks after Nazi scum destroyed Poland. It was the highest-grossing Yiddish film of its time. And it was hailed as “one of the best films ever to come out of Poland” by the New York Times. A Brivele der Mamen was the last of four acclaimed Polish Yiddish films by Łódź-born Joseph Green (Yiddle with his Fiddle; 1935, The Jester; 1937, Mamele; 1938 and A Brivele der Mamen; 1939). He would never make another Yiddish film again, explaining in a 1977 interview that “After the war ended, “There were 3 million moviegoers in Poland. Without Polish Jews, there is no point in making Jewish films. All the creative talent for Jewish theater came from Poland: the writer, the actor. And this was killed. This no longer existed.” #yiddishmovies