In early January, the theater staged “Warsaw: Tourist Guide,” a tragicomedy set in the period after World War II, when Jewish families returned to Poland to try to reclaim their property. Despite thick snow blanketing the city, there was a full house.

The first Jewish theater in Romania was founded in the 1870s in the eastern city of Iasi. The current theater in Bucharest was established in 1940 and remained open throughout the war even as Romania was in the grip of anti-Semitism and many Romanian Jews were sent to labor camps. Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany until it switched sides in 1944.

During the war years, Jewish actors and playwrights who were forbidden to perform elsewhere came to ply their trade, though they were not allowed to perform in Yiddish.

Later, during the Communist period, Nicolae Ceausescu, the authoritarian leader who governed Romania from the mid-1960s to 1989, tore down much of the old Jewish neighborhood to make way for his grand, Soviet-style architectural vision for the city.