In life, Dora and Sam Wasserman were inseparable from the time they first met during World War II in Kazakhstan. Perhaps fittingly, they died within three weeks of each other: Sam last Nov. 25 and Dora Dec. 15.

Given that she devoted her life to Yiddish theatre, and he was her faithful supporter through its good times and bad, their recent unveiling took on some of the drama that characterized their lives.

The couple have a single headstone in the Memorial Park section of the Baron de Hirsch Cemetery. Dora’s side on the left reads in Yiddish: “With love and magic, Dora founded the miracle of Yiddish Theatre in Montreal, a bridge to the Jewish people’s continuity.” In English, it is inscribed: “Founding Artistic Director of the Yiddish Theatre, Montreal.

Sam’s (or Shura, as he was better known) reads in part in Yiddish: “He shared Dora’s dream and supported her in life,” and in English, “A kind, strong and generous man.”

Between their two names is engraved a dancing Chassid, or mentshele, which Dora used as the symbol of her drama group for many years.

Rabbi Sidney Shoham officiated, and family and friends reminisced.

Anna Gonshor, a close family friend and actor in the theatre, put Dora in the generation of women who asserted, “Dos is vos ich vill” (This is what I want), and took their place in Yiddish culture. She recalled the impact it had on Dora of seeing Shlomo Mikhoel’s play Tevye and going to Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre as a child.

The K’El Maleh Rachamim was sung by longtime Yiddish Theatre member Pinchas Blitt, and the Kaddish was recited by Dora’s grandson Robert Turetsky, son of Bryna Wasserman, who now directs both the Yiddish and the English theatre at the Saidye Bronfman Centre.

Robert’s brother Ian said: “We will remember them as we knew them – vibrant, laughing, crying, screaming, joking, loving, kissing, always happy.”

Bryna’s sister Ella Gaffen recalled her parents’ enthusiasm:

“What is time? There are 24 hours in a day and we have to live 25!… There was no such thing as tired. There was no such thing as sick. The show must go on was not a cliché, but a way of life.”

The two daughters knew their parents did not belong only to them. The modest house was always full of people, even though in the early years there was little to share.

The service ended with everyone singing the wedding niggun from A Shtetl Wedding, one of Dora’s most popular plays.