Polish Actor Was Saved; Now His Film : Movies: The landmark Yiddish film ‘The Dybbuk’ has been pieced together from fragments despite the original negative being destroyed in WWII.

They missed the boat, but it saved their lives.

Late in the summer of 1939, the well-known Polish actor of the Yiddish stage, Leon Liebgold was in New York making a film called “Tevye,” the story on which “Fiddler on the Roof” was partially based. Liebgold and his wife, Lili Liliana, were set to sail back to their native Poland on Sept. 1, after shooting was finished--but production was behind schedule and they ended up staying in America.

It was a good thing, because on Sept. 1, the Nazis invaded Poland, and many of their friends, with whom they had worked in 1938 on the landmark Yiddish film “The Dybbuk,” were rounded up, sent to concentration camps and eventually died in gas chambers. Long thought lost, “The Dybbuk” has recently been pieced together from fragments gathered from Holland, Australia, France, Israel and Los Angeles and is playing a limited run at the Monica in Santa Monica in Yiddish with English subtitles. “The original negative was lost during the war,” according to Sharon Rivo, one of the two people responsible for piecing together the new version of the film, “scene by scene.”

The movie itself was based on the play, written in 1917 by S. Ansky. The playwright’s fascination with Jewish shtetl (small town) life was said to be the story’s inspiration. Ansky (pseudonym for Shloyme Zanvl Rapaport) was a folklorist who led expeditions through the villages and towns of pre-World War I Eastern Europe.

“The Dybbuk” tells the story of two friends whose wives are expecting babies. In the synagogue, the two make a vow that should one wife have a boy and the other a girl, they will marry. Yet when the children reach age 18, Sender, the father of the girl, Leah (played by Liliana), forgets his vow.

By chance, a handsome young student named Khonnon (Liebgold) arrives from another town. Unknown to Sender, he is the son of his friend, now deceased, with whom he had made the marriage vow. The young people fall in love, but Leah’s father has already chosen another man for his daughter. Khonnon, seeing how God does not help him win Leah, appeals to Satan for help.

As a theatrical piece, “The Dybbuk” has been performed in almost every language, including Japanese, according to Rivo and her partner Miriam Krant, who talked about the project by phone from their Boston offices. Rivo and Krant founded the National Center for Jewish Film, at Brandeis University and, in 1976, the American Film Institute awarded them $41,000 from funds granted by the National Endowment for the Arts, to assemble Yiddish films.

Other public and private donations helped them search around the world for whatever other films were available. “We want these films to be seen by future generations,” said Krant. “This is our Jewish heritage.”

“We expect the film to continue to circulate,” said Rivo. “I’ve seen it over 12 times, and I still find it fascinating.”

Rivo said the center has just recently acquired the original 1936 nitrate negative of “Yiddle mitt’n Fiddle,” a classic Yiddish film starring Molly Picon and Liebgold.

In an interview from his New York home on Friday, Liebgold said he is “very happy” that “The Dybbuk” is again being screened. Discussion of the movie nearly brought the 80-year-old actor to tears as he recalled the film, the period and the many fellow actors and friends who worked on “The Dybbuk” and perished in the Holocaust.

Gershon Serota, who portrayed the cantor in “The Dybbuk,” was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto; others committed suicide. The director, Michal Waszynski, managed to flee to Italy and survived, according to Liebgold.

“I was so of full of pain that I volunteered to join the U.S. Army. I was with counter-intelligence from 1943 to through 1956,” said Liebgold, who retired from acting two years ago. His wife died earlier this year.