Naava Piatka
Photo courtesy Naava Piatka
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September 2, 2009
An audience at Temple Emanu-El in Westfield listened, laughed, and cried last September as Naava Piatka described her embattled relationship with her father, Xavier Piat, a charismatic Holocaust survivor and entrepreneur from Poland. She then led them through an exercise in personal memory and forgiveness that left many with glistening eyes and smiles of surprise.
Now Piatka’s book about her father, No Goodbyes: A Father-Daughter Memoir of Love, War and Resurrection, has been published.
It comes just as Piatka is saying goodbyes of her own. The multi-talented author, born in South Africa and now residing in northern New Jersey, is in the late stages of cancer. It was diagnosed soon after that exuberant Westfield performance.
With rare openness, she has shared her struggle with family, friends, and fans. Her e-mails and blogs reflect the same pursuit of the positive that she brought to her one-woman show based on the life of her mother, Yiddish theater star Chayela Rosenthal; to her paintings; and to her work teaching and directing theater. She even posted an on-line video of her mane of red hair being shaved off.
In an e-mail announcement last week, she expressed her jubilation about the release of the book. “I pushed past the mounting pain of my horrid cancer and worked like crazy to get my book and the cover just the way I wanted, and finally published, since it’s always been a mission of mine to leave a lasting legacy that honors my Holocaust survivor parents’ past,” she wrote.
People from around New Jersey, New York, and further afield came to a book signing at her home a few days later. Very thin but clear-eyed and elegant, turning with delight to each person who came over to greet her, Piatka discussed why she feels so at peace. “I had to finish the book about my dad so it’ll be okay when I meet him,” she joked, but added, “I feel that I’ve said what I have to say. That’s why I’m okay about going.”
Her father died in 1998, at the age of 79, almost 20 years after his wife’s death. Piatka had started interviewing him about his life seven years earlier during his annual summer visits with her, but she was so inspired by what he related about her mother’s early career — how as the singing star of the Vilna Ghetto, she helped raise people’s spirits — that she put aside her promise to write his story.
Instead, she created Better Don’t Talk, a show about her mother, which she performed in the United States, England, Germany, Australia, South Africa, and in what is now Vilnius, Lithuania, in the same ghetto theater where Rosenthal once sang.
A chance encounter with distant cousins in England while doing the show there brought her back to the material she had gathered about her father. His story was as extraordinary as her mother’s, a saga that took him to St. Petersburg, Warsaw, London, Paris, and finally Cape Town, and brought him into contact with people like Israeli leaders Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin and famed entertainers Molly Picon and Danny Kaye. Writing about him, Piatka faced down her own demons, and reconciled issues that had troubled her much of her life.
At the book signing, she said, “It’s been so intense, going through all this and being able to share the love and joy I feel, it’s almost the way it was for my parents: going through what the horrors they endured and then being able to create entertainment that gave people joy. I feel so blessed.”
In the 1970s, as a cub reporter in Cape Town, I interviewed Piatka’s parents for a local newspaper. They were charming, as encouraging of others’ talent as they were confident about their own. That memory made meeting their daughter last September at Temple Emanu-El especially pleasurable. Now, as she takes this curtain call, I can almost hear them applauding her from just beyond the footlights.
For more information about Piatka, or to order No Goodbyes, visit www.nogoodbyes.info.
Naava Piatka dies
Naava Piatka, artist, author, educator
Author, artist, and educator Naava Piatka, who appeared at Temple Emanu-El in Westfield in September 2008, died at age 57 on Sept. 17, after a long struggle with cancer. She had most recently written No Goodbyes: A Father-Daughter Memoir of Love, War and Resurrection, about her father, Xavier Piat, a Holocaust survivor.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, and at her death a resident of northern New Jersey, Piatka began her performing career as a child, singing on stage with her cabaret star mother. She taught the performing arts, did radio work, and held her first solo exhibition of paintings of Jerusalem at the age of 22.
After moving to Johannesburg, she worked as a freelance journalist, started the art department at a local school, exhibited her artwork in local galleries, and cofounded a children’s theater company. After marrying and immigrating to the United States, Piatka continued exhibiting and selling her art, acted in regional theater, wrote and directed musicals, and served as a drama coach and workshop and seminar presenter.
Piatka was best known for her solo musical performance piece, "Better Don’t Talk! (Finding My Mother's Voice)” about her mother, Chayela Rosenthal, a star in Poland and in the Vilna Ghetto.
She traveled the world, performing in festivals and Holocaust commemorations and at Jewish community centers, museums, colleges, and theaters.
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