Martha Schlamme was an Austrian-born American singer and actress.
She was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Vienna, Austria in 1923. Her parents were Meier Haftel and Gisa Braten. Forced to flee to France in 1938 after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Haftel soon after joined her family in England, where they were then interned as 'enemy aliens' on the Isle of Man, where
she made her acting debut, appearing in a German-language production of As You Like It. At the camp, she heard a concert of the Danish-Icelandic folk singer Engel Lund, and it was exposure to Lund's repertoire, which included traditional Yiddish songs, that inspired Haftel to pursue a musical career. Living in London after the war, she supported herself doing office work while studying voice and piano and occasionally performing on stage and radio.
Emigrating to the United States in 1948, Haftel married her first husband, Hans Schlamme. She supported herself performing an ever-increasing repertoire of folk songs in multiple languages in nightclubs and concert venues in the Catskills and elsewhere.