HARENDORF, SAMUEL JACOB

HARENDORF, SAMUEL JACOB (1900–1969), Yiddish playwright and journalist. Born in Chenzin, Poland, Harendorf worked on Jewish papers in Vienna and Prague, moving to England before World II. In 1940 he founded the Yiddish World News Agency and edited it until his death. Harendorf was author of The King of Lampedusa (1944), a play based on an incident in World War II, when a Jewish RAF pilot accepted the surrender of an Italian island in the Mediterranean. The play had the longest run in the history of the London Yiddish stage. He also wrote a play called Hanna Senesh. -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: D. Mazower, Yiddish Theatre in London (1996), index; S.J. Harendorf, The King of Lampedusa (ed. and trans. H. Valencia, 2003).