Career
At the age of six Witler moved with his family from Belz (Galitsia) to Vienna, where he received a strict Chasidic religious upbringing. Fearing his family"s reaction, in 1919 (at the age of 12) he secretly joined the "Free Jewish Folksbiene" under an alias. He worked briefly as a journalist at the German Zionist weekly Wiener Morgenzeitung (Vienna Morning Times) but in 1926 returned to the Vienna theater scene, performing in comedies and operettas, studying opera repertoire with Yulianovsky and Fuchs, touring (Paris, London, South Africa, France and Vienna).
He spent three years in Poland in the mid-1930s, becoming a "public darling." In 1937 he appeared in Riga in A Khasene in Shtetl and The Galitzian Wedding by William Siegel.
Starting in 1940 he toured the United States., playing at New York City"s Hopkinson Theater in Siegel"s Forgotten Women and Chicago"s Douglas Theater in Siegel"s A Golden Dream. He recorded hundreds of songs.
His hits included:
Gelibte (Beloved)
Dzhankoye
Varshe (Warsaw)
Akhtsik er, zibetsik zi (He"s 80, She"s 70)
Byalostok
Mayn alte heym
Oyfn veg shteyt a boym
Leb un Lakh
Krokhmalne Gas
Zing, Brider, Zing! Belz.