Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer Receives Posthumous PETA Award At Polish Hometown Museum

Jewish Icon Honored With Vegan Luncheon Hosted by Polish Supermodel Joanna Krupa

For Immediate Release:
August 1, 2017

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

To mark this week’s anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, supermodel Joanna Krupa hosted a vegan lunch reception today at the childhood home of Polish Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer—who was honored with a posthumous PETA award. He fled the Holocaust, observed cattle being whipped and kicked to their deaths in a slaughterhouse, and condemned all needless violence and prejudice, becoming a vegetarian for ethical reasons.

Singer’s childhood home was recently converted into a museum, and photos are available here.

“Like most younger people, I had never heard of Singer, but when I learned that this fellow Pole was a godfather of the animal rights movement, I felt obliged to share his legacy with a new generation,” said Krupa at the event, which was cohosted by PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews. One of Singer’s famous quotes—”I did not become a vegetarian for my health. I did it for the health of the chickens”—was printed on a plaque and presented by Krupa to Singer Museum director Kinga Staroniewska.

The visionary author emigrated from Poland to the United States in the 1930s and became a prolific writer of novels, short stories, memoirs, and children’s books—always lacing them with social observations. His story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” which deals with the struggle that women face to gain acceptance in religious institutions, was made into an Oscar-winning film starring Barbra Streisand, while “The Slaughterer,” published by The New Yorker in 1967, examined the predicament of a young animal protector who tries to become the town rabbi—but instead is appointed the ritual kosher slaughterer. Singer died in 1992.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.