Furthermore, she must keep her siblings out of trouble: her younger brother gets mixed up with crooks and her sister Berta (Bullman) has eyes for the gangster Maks Katz (Menashe Oppenheim).

Eventually Khavtshi's morale breaks, and she moves in with the handsome musician Schlesinger (Zayenda) across the courtyard.

In this period of distress Khavtshi imagines the life of her grandmother in a dream-like song and dance sequence.

[2] Green convinced the cast and crew of A Letter to Mother to hold off production for some time and Mamele was filmed in six weeks in the fall of 1938, mostly in Warsaw with some exteriors shot in Ciechocinek.

[3] Green took great care to show many aspects of typical shtetl life, depicting holidays, nightclubs, unemployment and gangsterism.