Editing Anna Held (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Anna Held Scala Choubrac Alfred.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Anna Held at the Scala (Paris), poster by [[Alfred Choubrac]] (1890).]]
Born in [[Warsaw]], Held was named Helene Anna Held, daughter of a [[History of the Jews in Germany|German Jewish]] glove maker, Shimmle (aka Maurice) Held, and his [[History of the Jews in France|French-Jewish]] wife, Yvonne Pierre.<ref>{{cite book|last=Fields|first=Armond|title=Women Vaudeville Stars: Eighty Biographical Profiles|year=2006|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-786-42583-9|page=22}}</ref>

Sources list a variety of birth years, ranging from 1865 to 1873, but 1872 has been accepted in general. In 1881, [[anti-Semitic]] [[pogrom]]s forced the family to flee to [[Paris]]. When her father's glove manufacturing business failed, he found work as a janitor, while her mother operated a kosher restaurant. Held began working in the garment industry, then found work as a singer in [[Yiddish theatre|Jewish theatres]] in Paris and, later, after her father's death, London, where her roles included the title role in a production by [[Jacob Pavlovich Adler|Jacob Adler]] of [[Abraham Goldfaden]]'s ''Shulamith''; she was also in Goldfaden's ill-fated Paris troupe, whose cashier stole their money before they ever played publicly.<ref name=Pollak>{{cite web|last1=Pollak|first1=Oliver B.|title=Anna Held|url=https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/held-anna|website=Jewish Women's Archive|access-date=14 January 2018}}</ref>

As a young woman in France, Held converted to Roman Catholicism.<ref>{{cite book|editor1=James, Edward T. |editor2=Wilson James, Janet|editor3=Boyer, Paul S.|title=Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, Volume 1|volume=1|year=1971|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-62734-5|page=178}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.sandburg.org/SandburgsHometown/SandburgsHometown_AnnaHeld.html|title=Anna Held & John Drew- Sandburg's Hometown – by Barbara Schock – 22 June 2015|website=Sandburg.org|access-date=15 January 2018}}</ref>