(MUSIC).

Dvinsk (Daugavpils, Latvia), 1933

Poster in Latvian and Yiddish: “Chief Cantor of the Choir Shul of Warsaw, Cantor Moshe Koussevitzky will Conduct the Maariv Prayers in the Dvinsker Choir-Shul, Following which he will Sing other Prayers and Jewish Folk Songs…” “The synagogue will be well heated…No one will be allowed in without a ticket.”

Moshe Koussevitzky (1899-1966) was a celebrated cantor and vocalist who made many recordings in Poland and the United States. Cantor of important congregations in Vilna and Warsaw he first performed in the United States in 1938, at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Koussevitzky escaped the Nazis during the Holocaust by fleeing to the Soviet Union and in 1947 he and his family emigrated to New York where he became cantor of Boro Park’s Temple Beth-El.