Ukrainians honor Jewish singer’s memory

The late Jewish entertainer Emil Horowitz was honored in the central Ukrainian city of Gaisin.

A plaque commemorating the famous entertainer was dedicated at Gaisin’s cultural center in a ceremony last week attended by members of the Jewish community and local authorities. The ceremony was held onf the 85th anniversary of Horowitz’s birth.

Horowitz, a singer, actor and teacher also known as Gorovets who lived from 1923 to 2001, sang many well-known Jewish and Soviet songs in Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian. He performed in Ukraine, the Soviet Union, Israel, the United States and other countries.

He started his career in Ukraine and Moscow and during the early years was a soloist of Goset, the state-sponsored Jewish theater in the Soviet Union. In 1973, he moved to Israel and then to the United States, where he died in 2001.