Anna Guzik (variety artist)

Like Zinovy Shulman, Nechama Lifshitz, Sidi Tal, and Emil Gorovets, she had a career performing Jewish music and plays on the Soviet stage which was marked by various periods of censorship and official support depending on the political climate.

[1][2][3] Her mother was Rosalia Freilich and her father, Yaakov Guzik, was leader of a Yiddish theatre troupe; both had been students of Abraham Goldfaden.

[2][4] In the late 1920s the family's troupe was closed by authorities for being Bourgeois, and she turned to performing Jewish material for the Red Guards.

[1][2] She spent the early part of World War II acting in Leningrad, but then traveled to central Asia and performed for a time in Tashkent.

After the arrest of Jewish comedians Shimon Dzigan and Israel Shumacher, the arranger and pianist Shaul Berezovsky briefly joined her troupe and became her main accompanist.