Shmuel Shilo or Shmulik Shiloh ( he, שמואל שילה; 1 December 1929 – 4 October 2011) was an Israeli actor, director and producer, born in the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...

, and best remembered for his role on the Israeli production of Rechov Sumsum, a popular TV show based on

Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Workshop until June 2000) and ...

. In 1983 he founded the Negev Theatre and served as its creative director for fifteen years.Adva Cohen (10 June 2011)
Actor Shmuel Shiloh dies.
Ynetnews.com. Retrieved 28 July 2015.

Life

Shmuel Shilo was born in

Łuck Lutsk ( uk, Луцьк, translit=Lutsk}, ; pl, Łuck ; yi, לוצק, Lutzk) is a city on the Styr River in northwestern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Volyn Oblast (province) and the administrative center of the surrounding Lut ...

eastern Poland Eastern Poland is a macroregion in Poland comprising the Lublin, Podkarpackie, Podlaskie, Świętokrzyskie, and Warmian-Masurian voivodeships. The make-up of the distinct macroregion is based not only of geographical criteria, but also economic ...

(now Lutsk, Ukraine). Following the Nazi-Soviet

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...

and the creation of the Łuck Ghetto by the German occupation authorities in December 1941,Dr Pawel Goldstein
Lutsk (Luck) Ghetto.
Geni.com. Retrieved July 24, 2015. Shmuel (Shmulik, age twelve) was interned in the ghetto along with his family and 20,000 other

Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...

.Yad Vashem, Note: village Połonka ( pl, Górka Połonka or it
Połonka Little Hill
subdivision) is misspelled in the documentary, with testimony of eyewitness Shmuel Shilo. Retrieved July 24, 2015. He survived the ghetto liquidation action of August 19, 1942 in a cellar with his mother and siblings, and the subsequent deportation to Górka Połonka killing fields, but all alone on September 12, to join the slave workers in a Nazi labor camp set up at the Jewish school building. He escaped once more, during a prisoner revolt by hiding under a work bench,Yad Vashem, testimony of Shmuel Shulman (Shmulik Shilo), . Retrieved July 21, 2015. and survived the war in the forests amongst partisans. After reuniting with his sister rescued by the Poles, in 1946 the two made their way to Palestine. He was a member of

Palmach The Palmach (Hebrew: , acronym for , ''Plugot Maḥatz'', "Strike Companies") was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmac ...

and was a founding member of

Kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...

Tze'elim Tze'elim ( he, צֶאֱלִים) is a kibbutz in southern Israel. Located in the Negev desert, it falls under the jurisdiction of Eshkol Regional Council. In it had a population of . A military training base of the ground forces of the IDF (oft ...

. Shilo studied acting and performed regularly in several theatres. In 1983 he founded the Negev Theatre and served as its art director until 1997. He also acted in several films and television series, best known for his role on the Israeli production of

, Rechov Sumsum. He died of cancer at the age of 82.

Filmography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shilo, Shmuel 1929 births 2011 deaths Jewish Israeli male actors Jewish Polish male actors Israeli people of Polish-Jewish descent Polish emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Israeli male stage actors Israeli male film actors Israeli male television actors Israeli theatre directors Palmach members Nazi-era ghetto inmates Place of birth missing Place of death missing Deaths from cancer in Israel Holocaust survivors