Peter Freistadt (1931-2000) was an actor, and theatre and film director. Born in Bratislava in then-Czechoslovakia, when the Nazis invaded his hometown in 1944 when he was just 13, his mother sent him into hiding with a local family. In 1945, after being tipped off, the Germans arrested Freistadt and deported him to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. After the camp’s liberation, Freistadt returned to Bratislava, only to find out that both his parents were murdered in Auschwitz, and that his brother died during the notorious death marches.
After the war, Freistadt attended FAMU (the Czech film academy) and started directing for theatre. In the early ‘60s, the communist regime granted him permission for a short visit to Israel, after he had been invited to direct a production of Heinrich von Kleist’s The Broken Jug at the Ohel (‘tent’) Theatre. It was there that he met actor Becky Suzin who would go on to become his wife. Freistadt then took the decision to remain in Israel. A Prague court of law subsequently sentenced him to ten years in prison for defection, effectively blocking his return to his homeland.
Freistadt was a founding member of Israeli public TV broadcasting. He directed countless documentaries about prominent figures in Jewish history including Berl Katznelson, David Ben-Gurion, and Golda Meir. As part of his work in Rachel Films, the production company he had started, he produced and directed multiple documentaries about industrial towns, Israeli artists, etc.
Highlights of his film acting credits include An Intimate Story (Nadav Levitan, 1982), Green (Gideon Kolirin, 1984), Fellow Travellers (Judd Ne’eman, 1984), and The Ambassador (J. Lee Thompson, 1988).
Freistadt directed two feature-length films in his career: Motive to Murder (1966), and Sabina (1966) – both featuring Hungarian-born Hollywood star Eva Bartok.
In 1992 Freistadt published his autobiography, Faraway Fields (‘sadot rechokim’.)
