Jack Garfein

Biography

Jakob Garfein[1] (July 2, 1930 – December 30, 2019) was an American film and theatre director, acting teacher, and a key figure of the Actors Studio.

Growing up in Bardejov, Czechoslovakia during the rise of Nazism,[2] Garfein was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 13 and survived 11 concentration camps. In 1946, as an orphaned teen, he was among an early group of Holocaust[3] survivors to arrive in the U.S, and he obtained his American citizenship in 1952.

After studying at the Dramatic Workshop[4] in New York, Garfein became the first theater director to be awarded membership in the Actors Studio. He put on its first-ever play to move to Broadway, End as a Man (1953), and expanded the i...