Simon Paskal

Paskal was the son of a blacksmith, and worked for his father as a youth; due to his excellent singing voice he also became a choirboy for Cantor Abraham Osher in Galați.

[2] During the 1899 anti-Semitic riots in Romania, Paskal left the country on foot (part of the movement called the fusgeyers), eventually arriving in the United States in 1900 according to the Lexicon of Yiddish Theatre, or 1903 according to census documents.

[3] In the first decade of his arrival in the United States, Paskal began to record numerous Yiddish-language records for Zonophone, including Avram Goldfaden compositions such as Dos yoseml, as well as more contemporary compositions by Louis Friedsell, Arnold Perlmutter, and others.

[4] In addition to Yiddish music, he also recorded a number of Romanian language songs for those labels.

Paskal left the United States for Montreal during this time, and joined a troupe headed by Jacob Silbert; by 1913 he returned to the United States and joined Louis Coopersmith's Cleveland Royal Theatre, acting in such plays as Bar Kokhba and Shulamis.