Background
Zuskin was born in April 1899 in the town of Ponevezh, then in the Kovno Gubernye, today Panevėžys, Lithuania, a son of a tailor. There he met and married the daughter of another deported family, Rachel Holand (in Russian, Goland).
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Benjamin Zuskin
Edit ProfileEducation
He attended a cheder.
Career
Zuskin had a title of the People"s actor of the Russian SFSR. Zuskin was admitted into a college in 1911. Following the April 1915 defeat of a Russian army at the hands of the German army, the Russian authorities ordered the mass deportation of Jews living in central Lithuania to the interior of the Russian Empire — approximately 250,000 were expelled. The Zuskin family went to Penza on the European side of the Urals.
In Penza, Benjamin continued his studies and took roles in a local theatre.
In 1920 he became a student of Sverdlovsk Geological Institute, but in 1921 asked for transfer to Moscow Geological Institute. In that year, a daughter, Tamara, was born in Moscow.
Shortly afterward, however, Benjamin and Rachel separated, and Rachel and Tamara moved to Rachel"s home town, Ukmergė, Lithuania, and soon thereafter to Kaunas, the temporary capital of Lithuania. Tamara rejoined her father in Moscow in 1935 and enrolled in medical school there.
Zuskin joined Moscow State Jewish Theater in 1921.
In the same year Zuskin, together with Solomon Mikhoels, set on the stage a play "Sholom Aleichem"s Party". In 1922 he played a major role in "Witch" by Abraham Goldfaden. Zuskin"s performance blended with Alexis Granowsky"s system of organic interrelation of a word and gesture, plastics and rhythm of movements.
His roles showed to the audience a quarry of talented people among their routine activities.
Since 1935 he was also teaching at the actors" studio at the Theater. His most famous role was that of the Fool in King Lear with Solomon Mikhoels in the title role.
Achievements
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His characteristic features were light humor and romanticism which gave additional tints to a controversial life of Jewish hamlet of shtetl.
Membership
As a prominent member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, he was arrested at a hospital while being treated for nervous exhaustion and later executed on Joseph Stalin"s orders in the event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets on August 12, 1952.
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Born
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Died
August 12, 1952 (aged 53) -
Nationality
Russian Empire Soviet Union