BUDZYN AND THE SHOW OF SHOWS BASED ON A RECOLLECTION BY HENRY S. NEWMANN DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF HIS BROTHER BENJAMIN

PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY GUILA CLARA KESSOUS

THURSDAY, MAY 6, 2010, 8:00 P.M. SANDERS THEATRE AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 45, QUINCY STREET CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02138 TICKET RESERVATIONS: 617-496-2222 HTTP://WWW.BUDZYNTHEPLAY.COM [email protected]

This first-ever performance is being produced as a tribute to Holocaust victims and to mark the World Day of Prayer 2010, celebrating unity in diversity and working for a world of peace and justice. The production will feature survivors, performers, musicians and dancers in presence of dignitaries. The Mayor of Cambridge, Mr. David P. Maher, Executive Director of Harvard University Center for European Studies, Mrs. Patricia Craig, Harvard University Associate Provost for Arts and Culture, Mrs. Lori Gross, President of the New England Holocaust Memorial, Mr. Rick Mann, Honorary Consul of the Republic of Poland, Mr. Marek Lesniewski-Laas, Consul of Israel in Boston, Mrs. Rony Yedidia, Mr. Friedrich Löhr Consul General of Germany will honor us with their participation among other dignitaries. “Budzyn and the show of shows” awakens our consciences to the question of theatrical representation dealing with religious identity. The story takes place at the Nazi controlled Budzyn labor camp in Poland, where the commander was well known for subjecting the prisoners to particularly cruel tortures and told as seen through the eyes of one of its survivors, Henry S. Newman, The commander, knowing that the young Mr. Newman had studied dramatic arts in order to become a director, asks him to organize a small performance with the prisoners in order to entertain him. The catch, however, was that if the Commander didn't laugh, he would humilate Henry in front of the other prisoners before cutting his throat and assuring that he die in slow agony. Visionary director Guila Clara Kessous uses all forms of art to transmit the testimony of this survivor while overcoming the simple reference to the Shoah by attacking the crucial question of theatrical representation.

Contacts: Please send email inquiries to [email protected] To arrange photo opportunities or interviews, members of the press are invited to contact Sasha Yakhkind, Public Relations Director, at 617-816-0131

ABOUT THE AUTHOR The biography of the author of the recollection BUDZYN AND THE SHOW OF SHOWS begins at the beginning of this play. Prior to liberation from Dachau he was a student. This play describes an incident written by PRISONER NUMBER 3172, whose real name is HENRY S. NEWMAN.

ABOUT THE PRODUCER & DIRECTOR Recipient of the State Diploma of Performing Arts among other awards, Guila Clara Kessous acted, directed and produced in major theatres in the US and Europe. She conceives drama as a socially conscious reflection pervading multiple aspects of society and culture. Her approach to theater as a cultural marker is multifaceted. She received a PhD in ethics and aesthetics under the mentorship of E. Wiesel, an MBA in cultural business, and a cross-disciplinary MA in comparative dramaturgy, cinema, and pedagogy. She has taught at Harvard, Boston University, the Sorbonne, and the Wiesel Institute. Her sponsors include UNESCO (director, "Hilda"), the UN (director, "Tribute to Human Rights"), and the CNRS among others. She has collaborated with artists including John Malkovich, James Taylor, Marissa Berenson, Daniel Mesguich, Marie Christine Barrault and Theodore Bikel

SYNOPSIS The voices begin on April 19, 1943. It is Passover in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazis occupy a young family. Only Henry and Benjamin remain together; the rest are lost, forced to exist only in memory. The two young brothers are taken to the Labor Camp Budzyn near Krasnik in Poland run by a cruel and vulgar Kommandant Feix. We find out that Henry has studied to become a stage director at the university and is soon asked by Feix to direct a play for his own enjoyment. The catch: Feix presents Henry with an ultimatum; either create a play that humors him and live, or fail to capture the commander’s attention and perish. Henry struggles with limited resources and time to cultivate a play from scratch. The night before the play is supposed to premier for the camp twelve prisoners are hung and it is up to Henry to save those still alive. Can he succeed? Will he live on, or will he fall victim to the war’s atrocities and become a memory?

NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR: This play is based on the testimony of Henry S. Newman, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto as well as of Budzyn camp, situated about 3 miles away from the city of Krasnik in Poland. After the loss of his family during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Henry is confined with his younger brother Benjamin in Budzyn, where the commander is well known for subjecting the prisoners to particularly cruel tortures. Once in the Commander’s office, Henry is stunned to learn that the Commander has information on his artistic background prior to his arrival at the camp. Knowing that the young man studied dramatic arts in order to become a director, the Commander asks him to organize a small show with the prisoners in order to distract him. However, if the Commander doesn’t laugh, he will cut Henry’s throat and will personally make sure that he suffers in slow agony and is humiliated in front of the other prisoners… What intrigues me in this testimony is the fantastic use of theater as a communication tool. This commander, who has full power over his prisoners, who has the right to keep them alive or dead and who takes full advantage of his position savagely to satisfy his drive for violence by playing all sorts of sadistic games, is somehow aware of his own inhumanity. He lacks opportunities to laugh as well as the power of distraction because he is bored. I am fascinated by the idea that this commander, who spends his time imagining new refinements in the way he is going to condemn to death his next victim, could feel bored. In one way, through his request to Henry, he is trying to regain access to what he has lost and what he knows the prisoners keep: a piece of humanity. The ability to laugh, to forget the exterminator and exterminated, is only accessible through the experience of staging. Once again, it is thanks to the dramatic arts that Henry is able to survive, as he writes, “To hear people laugh in this unholy place was the greatest gratification anyone could ask for.” As the director, I was also fascinated by Henry S. Newman’s ability to detach himself from the camp’s atmosphere in order to create this show, proving that he has the capacity of abstraction necessary for theater, which supposes a tacit pact between the viewer and the viewed. The viewer knows he needs to be quiet, the viewed knows that he has to deserve being looked at because through this gaze, it is not the individual who is seen, but the ensemble, the show as a whole. As a result, Henry, as I portray him on stage, is aware that he is an actor at every single moment in the play (I advise my actors to remember the movie “Life is Beautiful”). He has a heightened consciousness of his body in the theatrical space: he is able to “make believe” to Germans that he is an

“expert” in mechanics in order to get assigned to Heinkel’s factory, and he is able to “make believe” to his brother that everything is going to go well during the performance. The performance operates on different levels: real Henry/ Henry who adapts himself to the environment (i.e. Henry/ brother, Henry/ commander, Henry/ prisoners…) I think that the real Henry was able to survive thanks to his capacity for adaptation and abstraction, which the scene demonstrates. By asking Henry to remind him of his humanity through laughter, the Commander subconsciously agrees to transfer his power to manipulate the macrocosmic structure of the camp as a whole to Henry. The faculty of abstraction has to be so intense that Henry can imagine himself as the Commander, and this process gives birth to a skit that will be performed in the play’s final version. If there is one thing I have restrained myself from doing since I began working with the theme of the Shoah, it is to speak for the survivors. My work is to engage with the survivor’s testimony and attempt to use theater to reconcile historical truth with artistic impression. My work is first of all a work of transmission and not of appropriation or even of creation. Creativity is only good if it adds to the veracity of the testimony. After the work that I have done with Elie Wiesel and the numerous discussions I was able to have with the concentration camps’ survivors, I sensed an emotional paradox. It is a kind of lassitude mixed with a profound desire to go forward in fixing the Shoah’s place in societal and historical consciousness once and for all. Rosian Zerner, a Shoah survivor and former vice president of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust, confided to me that "We no longer want to lock ourselves up in a past history. We want to live, contribute to the society, enjoy the company of our children and our grandchildren, telling them what happened, commemorating the Shoah but not wallowing in the pain of memory. Our experience has to reach beyond the Jewish community in order to enable us to touch as many people as possible." I wished to open this theatrical event on this theme in order to reach a wider audience and escape the idea of an episode of a Jewish story lived by Jews and performed for a Jewish public. By performing this play during the International Day of Prayer, my goal is to reach beyond the idea of community to present the idea of universality. The prayer that will end this performance isn’t addressed to a divine power but to ourselves, as responsible humans with a duty to be responsible towards one another…. - Guila Clara Kessous, PhD Producer & Director

THE CAST SOGDIANA AZHIBEN is an aspiring young actress who originally comes from Central Asia. She leads a double life of a graduate student at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and that of a performance artist.

Currently

pursuing

her

second

Master's degree in International Business and Communications, she plans to apply obtained knowledge in her future career of a performer. Sogdiana sees no fine line between theater, music, film and fashion and is, therefore, holding a four-dimensional approach toward her art by never attributing herself to one single genre. Having entered entertainment industry at the age of 15 outside of the United States, she took a long 10-year hiatus and devoted that time to education while keeping a close personal connection to performing arts. She studied Acting and Dance at Tufts Drama and Dance Department, took part in few local independent films, school production of The Peace Women at Tufts, and recent production of Sleep No More by A.R.T./Punchdrunk. Although her primary interest is in acting, she will continue to educate herself in voice, movement and visual art by gaining technique in vocal performance, modern dance and digital photography.

JILLIAN ROSE BARRY is a Junior studying acting and directing at Emerson College. She graduated from Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, MA in 2007 where she studied acting, dance, and classical voice. Past credits include Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Roxie in Chicago, The Witch in Into the Woods, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Kate in Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? Though acting is her primary focus, Jillian has recently been exploring her interests in directing and playwriting and made her directorial debut in December with her original play Bully, which premiered at The Bridge Sound and Stage in Cambridge. She is originally from Rindge, New Hampshire and enjoys hiking, teaching herself guitar and piano, and archery.

ROSIAN BAGRIANSKY ZERNER survived WWII in Lithuania in the Kovno (Kaunas) Ghetto and in hiding. She is also the daughter of survivors and the mother of Lang

Zerner who

joins

her

in

the Budzyn performance. She is the niece of Edwin Geist, the composer murdered by Nazis, whose music will be included in Budzyn. Upon her retirement from years of advocacy on behalf of Holocaust survivors and volunteer work to commemorate the Shoah and the victims, she received a Citation from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and another one from the Massachusetts Senate. In addition to her other positions, she has served as vice president of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust, on the Holocaust Survivors Advisory Board at Jewish Family and Childrens Service and represented the Greater Boston Child Survivor Group and American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors at other organizations and projects. She was a convener and is actively participating in local GermanJewish Dialogue groups and is on the board of American Friends of Mogen David Adom. . Rosian Zerner graduated Barnard College, has travelled to more

than

64

countries,

paints,

sculpts

and

writes

poetry.

JANET BUCHWALD holds a B.A. in theatre from Tufts University. She was a founding member

of

the

Boston

Shakespeare

Company and served as its Associate Artistic Director for four years. She then worked as Artistic Director of the Rhode Island Feminist Theatre, collaborating on original plays exploring women’s experience. Recently,

she

co-authored The

Mikveh

Monologues with writer Anita Diamant and The Colors of Water: An African American Jewish Journey with Diamant and Yavilah McCoy. She has appeared with the Harvard Yiddish Players in Di Gantse Velt iz a Teater and Shulamis.

FRED CALM sang in the Zamir Chorale of Boston for many years and is currently a singer in Koleinu, Boston's Jewish Community Chorus. A first-generation American, his parents are a a refugee and a survivor, both from Germany. Fred is active in Shoah commemoration and pro-Israel activism.

NAFTALI EHRENKRANZ is a sophomore at Maimonides High School in Brookline, MA. He has

been

involved

in

a

few

student

productions since he started high school, including Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers and Flip (a compilation of many short plays). He will make his directorial debut at his school later this spring with the S.P.O.T.Y. (second production of the year) and will be director of the main production next year. He has always taken an interest in the dramatic arts, especially in movies and theater. He is honored to be in this magnificent play and enthusiastic to be working with his wonderful cast in this production. He would like to take this last sentence out to thank his friends and family who have helped him in all endeavors in and out of theater (and a special thanks to the ones who got him involved with this incredible play).

JENNIFER GOODHART is a senior Chemistry concentrator in Currier House. Jennifer has a passion for the performing arts, having taken dance lessons from age 6 through high school. She acted in several productions in her high school theatre program and served as her drama club president. At Harvard, Jennifer served as co-executive

director

of

CityStep,

a

student-run non-profit organization that uses dance to promote self-esteem and self-expression in Cambridge public school students. She has also performed with the Harvard Radcliffe Modern Dance Company and Expressions Dance Company. Jennifer strongly values her Jewish heritage

and is very grateful for the welcoming community Harvard Hillel offers its students. As a sophomore, she participated in a volunteer trip to the Mayan Village of Muxucuxcah, Mexico with other students from Hillel and counts those memories and friendships as some of the deepest she has ever experienced.

FRED MANASSE was born in Frankfurt Germany in 1935 and was hidden in France during most of the war with his brother but lost his father, mother and sister in the holocaust (exterminated at Auschwitz in 1942). He came to the US in early 1945 and lived in a variety of foster homes in NY until he graduated from college in NY, married and worked as an electrical engineer. He worked in Industry for more than 20 years (Bell Labs, MITRE, Raytheon, Lockheed). After he got his PhD in Physics in 1962 he served as Professor of EE at several universities (CCNY, Princeton, Dartmouth, Drexel, UNH) as well as having his own renewable energy company for 10 years. After he retired in 2002 he carried out my hobby and became a sculptor. . In all of his sculpture he wants to let his passions and emotions dominate the pieces he creates rather than slavishly trying to make accurate representations of what he sees directly. He works in clay and recently have learned to carve in stone. He has exhibited a number of times and recently curated an Exhibition of work by Holocaust survivors at the Hebrew College where he also participated. His newest work is related to the holocaust and is called My Diaspora and tells his own story in an assembled Bronze. Last year he has won a prize in a national exhibition in Cape Cod. He is an occasional actor on Holocaust related themes and last performed 2 years ago in a play by Elie Wiesel directed by G.C.Kessous.

NARA MOUSISSIAN is very excited to be performing in her first professional play. Up until now, her only artistic outlets involved performing classical piano since the age of 7 and Rock Band karaoke.

She

graduated

from

the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008 with a degree in Brain & Cognitive Sciences. Currently, she is living a double life as a

researcher at Harvard Medical School and is conducting research on the genetics of autoimmune diseases like Multiple Sclerosis and Type I diabetes. She is very thankful for any opportunity that pulls her away from the lab and hopes to be part of more productions in the future. She thinks that theater is a tremendous medium for conveying messages and hopes that this play will enlighten and empower people from all backgrounds and walks of life.

KATIE MUELLER holds a BFA in Acting from Emerson College. She has trained in Linklater voice work, stage combat,

and

studied

Sedona, Arizona.

Shakespeare

in

Katie is passionate

about new plays and creating a more vibrant theatrical world. She writes, directs, stage manages and develops original solo performances. Katie is a collaborator with the group Rough Week Productions and originated the role of Eve’s Shadow in the musical The Fall. In the future Katie plans on establishing her own theatre company. She would also like to go to the International Theatre School founded by Jacques Lecoq in Paris.

MENDEL SCHWARTZ was born in Israel in 1999. When Mendel was 1 years old, he and his parent returned to the US. Mendel and his 5 siblings live in Brookline MA. He is now attending New England Hebrew Academy where he is in 4th grade. He enjoys acting, sports, and music.

ISAAC JACK TROMPETTER is born in 1942 in Amsterdam. He survived

the

war

in

hiding and

emigrated with parents to New York City in 1949. He emigrated once again to New England in 1972, has been in the art since childhood and

presently works with his wife in a flower design business. He is also active in the Greater Boston area group of Child survivors of the Shoah.

RONNIE ZAMORA has performed in 7 plays with the Missoula Children's Missoula, Montana.

Theatre from

Throughout his middle

school and high school years he has been in One Act Plays and has received 1st place for two productions. In his high school jazz band he received the award for All-Star Jazz Band Drumset

Player

twice

at

subsequent

jazz

festivals.

Recently he studied with Rebecca

Perricone at Berklee College of Music who was a student of Stella Adler the world renown actress. Ronnie is from Edinburg, TX and is currently studying guitar and majoring in Music Performance at Berklee College of Music.

LANG ZERNER is a business technology consultant based in Somerville, with a passion for helping small businesses communicate and collaborate better. Lang graduated from MIT in 1988 with a degree in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, That's where he also began his 25year-long love affair with improv, sketch, and community theater, including a run with the now-defunct but legendary San Francisco sketch troupe, Single Entendre. A second-generation survivor and son of Kovno survivor Rosian Zerner (who also appears in the play), Lang is grateful for the opportunity to help give new voice to Budzyn's story.

DANCERS MELISSA ALEXANDER is a senior in Pforzheimer House. She is a Psychology concentrator and is pursuing a secondary field in French Language and Literature. Melissa hails from Birmingham, Alabama, where she began training in classical ballet

at age 5. In addition to ballet, she learned several other styles of dance— such as jazz, modern, African, and flamenco. Melissa became involved with theater as a singer, dancer, and actor in her high school's production of Cabaret. When she entered Harvard as a freshman, she joined Candela Hip Hop, an on-campus dance group that incorporates hip hop and Latin American dance styles into its repertoire. In spring of 2009, Melissa choreographed a hip hop piece, which Candela performed at Presencia Latina, and a solo, contemporary ballet piece “Wild is the wind,” which she performed at the ARTS FIRST Dance Festival. That same year, she directed and starred in her own short film called "Through the eyes of Irene: The curious case of Clare Kendry," which is based off of Nella Larsen's Passing. Her other interests include art and design, singing, writing, and having a good time with family and friends.

CHERINA

CARMEL

EISENBERG

(Choreographer) is a multifaceted Jewish artist and educator who specializes in creative Jewish expression through dance, music, and drama. A dancer, actor, and musician since the age of three, she began her professional stage work as a child violinist in Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the La Jolla Playhouse, under the direction of Des

McAnuff.

She

continued

her

artistic

development by studying drama and directing at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, receiving a B. A. in music from the University of Washington, and choreographing, staging, and performing in eight original productions in California and Wisconsin. She is passionate about communicating emotionally charged stories through her choreography, using movement as a vehicle for deep expression beyond the constraints of words. As an artist-in-residence, she leads workshops on movement and prayer, supporting both adults and children in unleashing their Jewish creativity. A composer, and producer of award-winning classical Jewish CDs, she is sensitive to the subtleties of rhythm and line that enhances her choreography. In her spare time, she is writing a Jewish vegetarian cookbook and teaches 5th grade at Temple Israel

CECILIA RAASSINA spent the first nine years of her life in four countries and two states.

She danced through her

childhood at small studios in Sweden, Atlanta, and France and began her more serious classical dance training under the direction of Judith Koeckhoven at the Academy of Ballet Arts in Chelmsford, MA.

During

high

school,

Cecilia

completed dance intensives at Burklyn Ballet Theatre, Atlanta Ballet School, the Walnut Hill School, and Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School. She went on to study dance at the Boston Conservatory for two years. Wishing to inform herself of the world outside of dance, Cecilia transferred to the University of Massachusetts, Boston where she earned a B.A. in Philosophy in 2008 and a Master’s Certificate from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy in 2009. Cecilia has performed choreography by Martha Graham, George Balanchine, Murray Lewis, and Jose Limon. Notable influences in her artistic development include Emi Tokunaga, Luis Fuente, Monica Lender, Sean Curran, Tommy Neblett, Leslie Koval, Parren Ballard, and Donna Silva. Cecilia has been dancing professionally on and off for five years, doing freelance dance and performance work in the Boston area. She recently began teaching dance to children and adults at The Brookline Ballet School in Brookline, MA.

ANNA RESNICK received a B.A. in Literature from Harvard College. She has directed and acted in numerous theatrical productions,

including

Paula

Desdemona:

A

Play

Handkerchief

and

five

Vogel's

about Gilbert

a and

Sullivan operettas. In 2009, she co-wrote, co-produced,

and

co-directed

The

Matriarchs at Harvard Hillel. Anna is a musician and an avid dancer, pursuing everything from ballet to belly dance. She recently returned from a week-long heritage trip to Poland, where she visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, and Belzec concentration camps. She is grateful for the opportunity to continue that journey through theater.

MUSICIANS BOB

BRADSHAW

(vocalist/guitarist) is from Cork, Ireland and graduated from the Berklee College of Music last May.

Formerly

singer,

songwriter and guitar player with the San Francisco rootsrockers

Resident

Aliens

-

noted by the San Francisco Herald for "their exhilarating music" which "served as the soundtrack for many of our favorite memories of San Francisco," - Bob has recorded four albums of original songs. He has been described as a cross between Ray Davies, Randy Newman and Ryan Adams by Taxi. “Thank God for alliteration”, says Bob.

DAESIK

CHA

(Pianist)

is

currently

pursuing a PhD in Musicology at Brandeis University. Most recently, he served as an instructor at the Sharp School of Music and Western

Brown

performance

High

activities

School. have

His

included

appearances at Bachanalia Music Festival (USA), Covington Art Club (USA), Lucca Opera Festival (Italy), Tilburg Opera Choir (Netherlands) and Bildhoven Musician Series (Netherlands). Cha toured the Netherlands with tenor Wil van Leysen. He completed a Bachelors Degree in Piano at Kyung-Won University, as well as a Graduate Performance Diploma in Piano at South Netherlands Royal Music College in Holland. He received a Masters Degree in Music History and Literature at the University of Cincinnati.

ZHANNA

CHATSMAN

(Singer)

holds

Masters Degree from Israel Haifa University, Music Department. She began her musical career in St. Petersburg, Russia where she graduated from Music school and College of Music. Through

her life she has been performing with different musical ensembles and choruses. For the past several years been performing solo concerts and with different artists folk Jewish songs, recorded a CD of songs in Yiddish with Vladimir Friedman. Zhanna is always trying to stay engaged in the life of the Jewish community through her involvement with Makor organization. Was part of Artistic Hannukah Festival in 2007, 2008. She has lately been performing ethnic pop and folk tunes in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian and other languages with Fenix group in St. Petersburg Cafe in Newton.

DEAN DAVIS (Drummer) was first inspired to play drums when he found that his grandfather had a tiny Slingerland snare drum in his basement. Dean loved to mess around with that little snare. It was not until 2000 when he found the drums again. He was playing in the school band as a percussionist, but it was not a priority. In fact, he wanted to quit playing drums all together in 8th grade. He spoke to his band director who told him about the auditions for the drumline in high school. It was then that Dean chose his path; he gave up soccer and focused primarily on his music. It was a surprise to him that this passion was ignited so quickly. He practiced very hard for two weeks and took lessons, auditioned for high school and was given a bass drum, which at that time was rare for a freshman to get anything other than cymbals. He was in his element and it was then that he knew it. Another huge influence in his decision for staying with music was his uncle. His Uncle Russell was a drummer and played for over 60 years, playing big band, jazz and the list goes on. He performed with multiple groups and still loves playing every single minute of his life. This inspired Dean to play and learn all he could about the drum set. Dean could see that when his uncle played, he was in a “zone”, almost one with the drums. That was a feeling that Dean understood and knew again that he was following the right path. A couple years later of practicing and with very expensive and training from teachers, Pat Dianni and Gordon Nunn, Dean became very accustomed not only to his true playing styles, but also to the drumming of Carter Beauford, Joel Rosenblatt, Steve Gadd, and David Garabadi. He, as well as his instructors, realized that his musical tastes were much more mature than most kids his age. Dean currently studies at the world renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA with an intended major of Performance and Business. He has studied under Tony “Thunder” Smith (Jan Hammer Group), Mike Mangini (Steve Vai, Extreme) and Bob

Tamagni (Famous Clinician). Dean has performed on radio stations, drumset competitions, various sessions and numerous groups such as: Pittsburgh Youth Pops Orchestra, River City Youth Brass Band, Western Allegheny County Honors Band, Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra.

CLARA KEBABIAN (Violin) began playing violin in the classical tradition steeped in the standards of solo and orchestral repertoire through studies at New England Conservatory, Boston University, and Wellesley College. Her passions though have lain in contemporary styles ranging from rock to hip-hop to country. A respected session musician, she has recorded and performed with a variety of local, national, and international bands. She has shared stages with Ronnie Milsap and Landon Pigg, Her festival performances include South By South West, The Muzine Festival (Greece), DUMBO Arts Under the Bridge, and the Boston Cyberarts Festival.

Founder of KEC Artist

Management, she records her solo work for Lowbudget Records and Pond View Acre Records. In addition to performance, she enjoys teaching violin and

beginning

piano

to

students

of

all

ages.

http://www.myspace.com/clarakebabian

GEORGIA LUIKENS (Violinist) was born in Sydney, educated

at

Sceggs

Darlinghurst

and

holds

undergraduate degrees in Music (with first class honors) and English Literature from the University of New South Wales. She is in her second year of the PhD Musicology Program at Brandeis University where she holds the Harry & Mildred Remis Fellowship. Georgia has been a member of various orchestras and ensembles including the Sydney Youth Orchestra, Penn State Philharmonic and Brandeis-Wellesley Orchestra, Boston Unhinged Players and Irving Fine Society Ensemble and was the violinist in the Sydney-based Cavendish Trio from 2005-2008. Prior to relocating to the US in mid 2008, she also sang with the award winning Sydneian Bach Choir.

SANDI-JO MALMON (Cellist) is a member of the

Kaleidoscope

Chamber

Ensemble,

Trio Veritas, the Lake George Opera Festival (NY)

and

the

Eleva

Chamber Ensemble. As a member of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Ensemble, she has appeared in concert at various venues around New England, in the Midwest, on the eastern seaboard, and in Europe. She has performed with the New Hampshire Symphony, Hanover Chamber Orchestra, Opera Boston (formerly the Boston Academy of Music), Cantata Singers, the Boston Secession, and the Handel Society Orchestra at Dartmouth College. She made her Lincoln Center debut in 1991 with the Boston Quartet. She is currently on the adjunct cello faculty of Northeastern University. She has served on the faculties of the International Composers' Conference at Wellesley College, the International String conference in Pennsylvania, Powers Music School and the Brookline Music School. A student of Richard Kapuscinski and Paul Tobias, Sandi-Jo received degrees in cello performance from Oberlin College/Conservatory of Music, the New England Conservatory of Music and the Longy School of Music. She has recorded on Blue Hill Records, North Star Records, Lakewest Records and Pamet River Recordings. Sandi-Jo is the Librarian for Collection Development at the Loeb Music Library at Harvard University.

CAMEROUN PORTER (Guitarist)

grew

Barboursville,

up

WV

in and

started playing guitar when he was 13. He took private lessons for three years at a local

music

store

and

continued self-taught after that. He was a part of Cabell Midland High School’s Jazz Band and assisted in the harmonic accompaniment to the Indoor Drumline hosted by Marshall University. In 2008 and 2009, Cameron came in first place in Music Theory at Marshall University’s S.C.O.R.E.S. academic competition. Cameron now attends the world-renowned Berklee College of Music majoring in Film Scoring. He plans to be a composer for any type of media

and musical style and possibly have a progressive rock band, also. Besides music, he has helped in many charity events and church mission trips to places close to home and far away. Now is the treasurer of the Boston branch of a charity organization called Hidden Angels, he is encouraging today’s youth to give back to the community in many ways.

BARRY SHAPIRO (Accordionist) is a founding

member

of

the

Klezmer

Conservatory Band, Shirim and the B.S.O. (Barry Shapiro Orchestra). He currently teaches the klezmer ensemble at the J.C.C. in Newton and also privately. The last Holocaust show he was in was a production called "They Fought Back" at B.U.

He graduated from N.E. Conservatory in 1982 and performs

concerts, weddings and Bar/Bat Mitzvoh's around the NE area.

PORTIA WALKER (Violinist) began playing the violin in the first grade and never looked back. She played extensively in symphony orchestras

and musical

pits

throughout

schooling years and at Colby College, where she earned her BA in English and began singing in the college's Chorale.

During

these

Steven

years

she

studied

with

Kecskemethy of the Portland String Quartet. Upon moving to Boston, she became a member of various orchestras and ensembles including the New England Philharmonic, the MIT Summer Philharmonic Orchestra, Hillyer Festival Orchestra, as well as several pick-up string quartets.

Musical

performance has been a mainstay throughout her life, even while pursuing her MBA at Simmons. In addition to playing the violin, Portia also sings with Chorus pro Musica and serves as President of the organization.

MANY THANKS TO OUR CHORISTS: SOPRANO L. AIMEE BIRNBAUM EILEEN HUANG FIONA LOCKYER MEZZO-SOPRANO AMY ENGELSBERG CHARLOTTE HENDREN AMELIA LAVRANCHUK BASS-BARITONES MATTHEW COHEN DAVID FREDERICK DEREK STRYKOWSKI (JAE KYO HAN, Rehearsal Pianist)

PRODUCTION TEAM VANDA GYURIS (Dramaturge) is a senior at Harvard University. She is originally from Hungary and grew up in California after her family immigrated to America. She is a History concentrator and has been involved in theatre since third grade. At Harvard she has been an active member

of

the

American

Repertory

Theatre, as well as the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club. She has traveled and written for Let’s Go, created several short films and is currently working on a stage adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. She hopes to pursue a career as a director of film and theatre.

BETTY ROSEN (Assistant Director) is a sophomore

at

Harvard

College

from

Cleveland,

OH.

She

concentrates

in

Literature (Hebrew and Arabic). In high school, she acted in several productions including The Tempest and The Pajama Game as well as taking drama classes and attending a summer Shakespearean acting

workshop. However, her primary involvement in theater has been through playwriting. She wrote four plays for her high school’s annual Student Playwriting Festival, winning the award for best play every year. Two of her plays have also been performed in the Dobama Theatre Playwriting Festival. At Harvard, Betty took a playwriting course last year and has participated in a workshop through the OFA. Last year, she co-wrote, directed, and -produced the original play The Matriarchs at Harvard Hillel, and she is currently co-writing an original musical version of the biblical story of Job for Harvard Hillel to be performed in Spring 2010. She has also written several one- and two-act plays outside of classes. Betty credits her Judaism with being a shaping facet of her identity and is particularly interested in Jewish history and theater; she has often explored themes relevant to Jewish history such as genocide and alienation in her plays. In the future, she hopes to become a playwright and professor of Comparative Literature focusing partially on Israeli and Palestinian theatrical texts and their performance.

SOPHIE GORLIN (Literary Advisor) received her BA in English Literature from Barnard College of Columbia University in 2006. There she concentrated in creative writing and minored in European history and worked as a peer writing tutor. She has worked in education for the past four years, first at an English tutor through an AmeriCorps program and then at an after-school program in the Bronx, NY. She is currently in the Czech Republic on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship. When not teaching nor engaging in the Czech national sports of drinking beer and mushrooming, Sophie is writing historical fiction. She hopes to return to the field of urban education once Stateside and continue to pursue both teaching and writing.

EVA POLONKAI (Graphic Designer) is an Hungarian-born multifaceted visual artist. She lives in the United States and works as a freelance designer, illustrator and painter. Her powerfully evocative creations interlaced with cross cultural references cater to the mind, heart and soul. The multiplicity of her ideas are

interpretations

of

experienced

or

imagined human relations and reactions, mirroring the deep solitude of one's being. The images she creates are invitations for the onlookers to engage in searching for humanity and make meaning out of life.

ALISON RITTERSHAUS (Set Designer) is a sophomore at Harvard University, currently concentrating in Visual and Environmental Studies. Her artistic interests primarily lie in the intersection between historical exhibitions and works of art and the use of installations as inspirational educational tools. She is originally from Maine, where she grew up with a love of theater and acted in many plays, including Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, throughout elementary and high school. She has designed sets for excerpts of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "The Rivals" and Alan Haehnel's "Property Rites," as well as for "Indian Summer" a oneact that she also wrote and directed. In her spare time, she enjoys playing rope-tension snare drum with the Third Maine fife and drum corps and Lincoln Minute Men.

HOLLY

GETTINGS

(Lighting

Designer)

began her theater interest, like many of us, at the community theater level in high school with the Garrett Players in Lawrence, Mass.

After

graduating

from

Boston

University in 1977, she began lighting concerts in 1980 at Sanders Theater in Cambridge, and has, in the course of a long career, worked with many of the leading performance artists of our time in some of the most celebrated venues in the country. She is actively serving as the Technical Director for Public Celebrations in the City of Cambridge and as technical consultant for Harvard University Development and Alumni since 1985. Tours with Joan Baez, Phil Coulter, Opera New England, and choreographer Paula Josa Jones led to serving as the Technical Director and Lighting Designer for the Calvin Theater in Northampton, Mass. From 1998-2002.

She has

been the Technical Director for the Ko Festival of Performance in Amherst Massachusetts since 2009, and currently divides her time between

Arlington, where she teaches theater and photography at Belmont Hill School, and Charlemont, where she recently joined the Board of Directors for the Memorial Hall Association in Shelburne Falls.

ANTONIA PUGLIESE (Costumer) is a sophomore concentrating in Molecular and Cellular Biology. She is from the nearby town of Medford, MA. Her history of costuming is actually based in history - making reproductions of original garments to wear for reenactments. In fact, her real background is not in theater at all, but in living history and historical recreations. She has been a member of the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers, a dance troupe that performs nineteenth century ballroom dancing, and has recently been doing her own teaching and reconstructions from period sources. She has also run educational programs at numerous museums (mostly in Concord, MA - Orchard House, the Wayside, and several others), attended Civil War reenactments, and done bayonet drill from a young age. All these activities called for specialized clothing, which she learned to sew from her parents. Since arriving at Harvard, she has stumbled across the previously foreign idea of costuming for the stage. This is the fourth show for which she has done costuming, attempting to translate the skills she learned for making reproduction clothing into skills for making and assembling stage costumes.

LENNA KALEVA (Makeup/Wig Designer), retired from the College Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati (Ohio) in 1999 after 26 years of distinguished service. During those years she educated scores of young people to go on to become professionals in theatre and film. Ms. Kaleva has participated in over a hundred productions of all genres. The first part of her career was spent in film during her 20year tenure with Mosfilm Studio/Moscow, Russia.

The

highlights of free-lance work are: the cult movie of 80’s “Liquid Sky”, three summer seasons “The Utah Shakespearean Festival”, three seasons of students’ “Summer Opera” in Lucca/Italy. Her last credit is Contributing Artist for the Ninth Edition of Stage Makeup by Richard Corson. Now she

lives in Boston, enjoying life and company of her daughter’s family and friends.

JOSH SOLAR-DOHERTY (Videographer) is a junior at Emerson College. He is currently studying Film Production and has been involved in a number of student films. Most recently, he has been the cinematographer for the films Strings, A Poker Match, and Hands of the Nocturnal Clock. He is thrilled to be involved in a production that incorporates so many layers of visual art as well as being a meaningful and powerful piece. In a year from now, Josh will be living and studying film in Los Angeles and plans to continue his career out west after he graduates from school.

TAMARA

WOLFSON

(Video

Effects)

graduated from Art School and Architectural College in Ukraine. She got a classical painting education from masters. Then, she learned different mural techniques and developed a special personal painting style which was attributed by critics as post-expressionism. She participated in Art shows in Ukraine, Moscow and USA. Her first solo show “Jewish portrait” was in Ukraine and Moscow in 1995. Her last solo show was in 2010 in Lexington, MA. Tamara's first encounter with the theater happened when she worked as an artist for Opera and Ballet theater in Dnepropetrovsk in teenager years. Most of her professional life Tamara worked as a muralist.

NOAH RAYMAN (Stage Manager) is a stranger to the theater community, but he wanted to help out in this fascinating production because of his tremendous respect for Guila and Betty. His acting experience is limited to a single stint as the"roi"

in

Guila

Clara

Kessous'

performance last spring, Ondine. He has

since come to realize his acting potential--none. So this time around, he's going behind the scene to investigate what really goes on back there. So far, all he's seen is hours and hours of committed work from everyone involved.

TRISTAN GOVIGNON (Photographer) creates photographs that reveal the beauty of his subjects and capture the significance of a moment. He reflects the beauty of the outside

world

with

his

camera

and

transforms the images he sees into art. Govignon holds a BFA in Photography and is a Professional Digital Photographer that creates studio and environmental portraits, and fine art. His work can be seen at: www.tristangovignonphotography

SASHA YAKHKIND (Public Relations Director) has always be interested in how the mind works, and has sought to understand it through science and explore it through the arts. She completed a BA in neuropsychology and philosophy of mind at Boston University and an MS in biomedical sciences at Tufts University School of Medicine. She completed research about the impact of yoga on the brain and currently works in clinical research at Children's Hospital Boston. She studied public health in India, China, and South Africa and researched women's and children's health in Russia, Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala. In her spare time, she teaches yoga, dances, and does anything that has to do with the outdoors. She is honored to work with such amazing people and to be part of this incredible production.

NICHOLAS ALEXANDER BROWN (Conductor)

whose

considered

"dexterous

conducting

is

and confident...

[with] subtle, seamless baton strokes," is the music director and founder of The Irving Fine Society Singers & Ensemble, and Boston Unhinged Chamber Players.

He is Assistant Conductor of the Brandeis-Wellesley Orchestra as well as the Brandeis University Chorus & Chamber Choir. He recently made his debut with the Orquesta Filarmonica de Honduras as a guest conductor and horn soloist. Nicholas has conducted ensembles such as the 215h Army Band, Valley Forge Military Academy & College Regimental Band and Regimental Choir, New England Conservatory Youth Repertory Orchestra, as well as the Kammerphilharmonie Graz, Norwalk Symphony and Montgomery College Symphony in workshops and reading sessions. He served as a staff conductor for Boston Opera Collaborative. Nicholas has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall, Tanglewood, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, the Embassy of France in Washington D.C., the University of Klagenfurt, Austria, Mirabell Palace in Salzburg, Austria and Teatro Nacional Manuel Bonilla in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. In workshops and masterclasses he has studied with Jorma Panula, Markus Lehtinen, Achim Holub, Diane Wittry, Toby Purser, Anthony Maiello and Adrian Gnam. His conducting teachers and mentors include Jeffrey Rink, Stephen Czarkowski, Neal Hampton, and James Olesen.

EDWIN GEIST (Composer) composed the kind of music Hitler called “degenerate”. Born in Berlin in 1902, Edwin was forced to flee Germany after the Nazis came to power and he was prohibited to compose or work because his father was Jewish. He lived in Lithuania with his Jewish wife, pianist Lyda Bagriansky, and was interned with her in the Kovno Ghetto when the Nazis occupied Lithuania. He was temporarily released and asked to compose, but he convinced the authorities he could not do so unless his wife would also be freed and she finally joined him, although with cruel limitations imposed on their lifestyle. He was eventually murdered in 1942 and Lyda, unable to live without him, committed suicide shortly after. Friends then broke into their boarded apartment, filled a suitcase with his musical scores whereas the diary he wrote for Lyda while separated from her was already with his friends, Helene and Margarete Holzman. That was all that survived from Edwin. The lives and love of Edwin and Lyda are described in Dies Kind Soll Leben , (This Child Must Live). This memoir, written by Helene Holzman and edited by Reinhard Kaiser and Margarete Holzman, won the coveted Geschwister Scholl Prize. Reinhard Kaiser then

went on to write a biography of Edwin Geist, Unerhoerte Rettung:Die Suche nach Edwin Geist (Amazing Rescue: The Search for Edwin Geist). A CD of Edwin Geist's Chamber Music and Songs was released in 2007 and received an award from the biggest and most prestigious musical publication in Germany.

SPECIAL ARTISTIC COLLABORATION OF: BARBRA STREISAND is an actress, director, producer and writer. Among her many films are Hello, Dolly! (1969), A Star Is Born (1976), Yentl (1983) and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996). As a child she attended the Beis Yakov Jewish School in Brooklyn. She is good friends with singer/songwriter Neil Diamond, with whom she dueted on the smash hit song, "You Don't Bring Me Flowers". They both attended the same high school and sang together in the school choir. Barbra has one son, Jason Gould, with ex-husband Elliott Gould. She is now married to James Brolin. She has won many awards including two Oscars, five Emmys, eight Golden Globes, three People's Choice Awards, two Women in Film Crystal Awards and two ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards. Barbra has also received an American Film Institute award and a Cecil B. DeMille Award.

STEVE

GUTTENBERG

has

appeared

on

numerous TV shows, most recently Veronica Mars , where he played Mayor Woody Goodman. Guttenberg was very popular in the 1980s, and was most famous for his role as Carey Mahoney in the Police Academy franchise. He also starred in the sci-fi movies Cocoon and Short Circuit. In 1987, he starred in the comedy film Three Men and a Baby with Tom Selleck and Ted Danson. He was also executive producer of the Emmy-award winning show CBS Schoolbreak Special, a program that focused on issues affecting high school students. Guttenberg is dedicated to helping the homeless and to improving opportunities for young people. He was chosen Ambassador for Children's Issues by the Entertainment Industry Foundation.

TO GO FURTHER Budzyn is a village in the Lublin district, situated 5 km (3 miles) northwest of the town of Krasnik. A military – industrial complex, including an aircraft factory, was established on the premises of a former munitions factory in 1937-38. Following the German occupation of Poland, the military industries were taken over by the Hermann Göring Werke, an organisation formed in the early days of the Nazi regime by Göring and some of his cohorts as a Reich-owned enterprise. Hermann Göring Werke was to become a gigantic concern, operating steel works, mines and other heavy industries throughout occupied Europe. The aircraft factory was operated by the Heinkel Company (Heinkel Flugzeugwerke).

A forced labour camp was set up in Budzyn in the autumn of 1942, and 500 Jews were brought in from neighbouring towns at the beginning of November 1942, mainly from Krasnik. At that time the local ghetto was liquidated in that town, and the prisoners destined for the Budzyn camp were selected from among several thousands of Jews who were to be deported to Belzec or shot at the Krasnik Jewish cemetery. That autumn a further 400 POWs were added from the Konskowola camp and from the Lipowa Street Camp in Lublin. From inception, Jewish POWs formed the functionary prisoners in the camp; they still wore the uniform of the Polish army.

Letter from Belzyce

At the beginning of 1943, the last Jews from the Belzyce ghetto, including women and children, were also sent to Budzyn.

Among

this

group

were

German Jews deported to Belzyce from Stettin in 1940 and from Leipzig in 1942. Following the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 800 Jews arrived from Warsaw at the end of April and the beginning of May 1943. The Warsaw group consisted of about 150 Jewish workers who had worked at the Okecie Airfield in Warsaw prior to the uprising in the ghetto. The final group of prisoners were sent to the camp on 10 July 1943. These were the last Jews from the Hrubieszow Ghetto. By mid 1943 the camp population had risen to 3,000, including 300 women and children. The precise number of Jewish prisoners in Budzyn was provided in the report by the Home Army (AK – Armia Krajowa) from Krasnik, dated 15 March

1944. At that time there were 2,457 Jews in the camp, including 319 women. This number of prisoners was lower than in 1943 as a result of executions and selections in the camp. The prisoners worked in the military factories, in construction and in general services.

The first commandant of Budzyn was SS-Unterscharführer Otto Hantke, succeeded by SS-Oberscharführer Heinrich Stoschek. Before taking up his position in Budzyn, Hantke had served as an SS man in the Lipowa Camp in Lublin. He was sent to Krasnik personally by Odilo Globocnik as "a good organiser”. Hantke was responsible for the selection during the final liquidation of the Krasnik Ghetto. He personally selected the first prisoners when they arrived at the camp. He was also responsible for the first selection of the sick prisoners, who were deported to Belzec. This selection was organised in accordance with an order from Christian Wirth. The next, and most notorious commandant of the camp was SS-Oberscharführer Reinhold Feix (December 1942 – August 1943), who was replaced in turn by Otto Mohr. Mohr’s reign was short lived; he was replaced in the late summer of 1943 by SS NCO Fritz Tauscher. In the meantime the function of the commandant was also in the hands of Adolf Axmann. Tauscher was replaced by a man named Frank. Whilst he was not in command for very long, Frank ruthlessly suppressed a mass escape attempt in the winter of 1943. The final commandant was SS-Obersturmführer Josef Leipold. In February 1944, Budzyn officially became a sub camp of KZ Majdanek. The SS garrison numbered 74 persons, all of whom, including Leipold, had previously served at Majdanek. Leipold went on to command the Schindler camp at Brünnlitz, at the end of the war, having shot himself in the foot, injuring his right toe. The rumour amongst the camp inmates was that he had deliberately carried out this act to avoid front-line service

Feix and Tauscher both served at Belzec. Feix was one of the cruellest and most brutal SS men at Belzec, and he continued in the same manner in Budzyn. Neither those who preceded or succeeded him as commandant were as barbaric.

In March 1943 he participated in the final liquidation of the Belzyce ghetto, during which "action" many children and women were killed before the eyes of the other Jews and Poles of the town. The Ukrainians of the camp guard together with Feix himself, beheaded the victims with axes. Selected Jews had to observe these executions and were later sent to Budzyn. Feix also organised public mass executions in the camp. The selected

prisoners, who were accused of all kinds of misdemeanours, were shot or hanged during the evening roll calls, either on the Appellplatz or just behind the fence of the camp. Sometimes the bodies of the victims were cremated in this place. After every execution the prisoners had to sing, especially the Polish tango "Marianna" or Yiddish songs. Feix had a mascot in the camp, a 6-7 year-old Jewish boy called "Malpe" ("Ape") or "Borscht" by the inmates. The boy wore an SS uniform and held a small whip whilst assisting the commandant. The execution of Rudolf Bauchwitz, a German Jew from Stettin who was a member of the group of Jews from Belzyce ghetto, was a notorious event. Bauchwitz had been a lieutenant in the German army during WW1, and was a very popular person in the camp. Because he was a fluent German speaker, he worked in the camp administration. He was well liked by the other prisoners as well as by some of the SS men, who saw in him a representative of German culture and discipline. Bauchwitz's wife and son were also prisoners in Budzyn. One day Feix ordered Bauchwitz to be publicly hanged. Nobody knew the reason for this execution, but among the prisoners there were rumours that Bauchwitz knew too much, and that Feix hated him

because

conform

to

Bauchwitz the

Nazi

did

not

stereotype

concerning Jews.

Budzyn Camp

At the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a survivor of Budzyn, Dr David Wdowinski, described how he had been deported to KZ Majdanek in May 1943 following his participation in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. A few days later he was transferred to Budzyn together with 806 other Jews. He described their reception at the camp: "Turning, we sighted Camp Budzyn about a quarter-mile distant, this was a genuine SS camp, a fenced in rectangle flanked by four towers, one at each corner. Looking out from the top of these were armed Ukrainian guards manning machine guns. Directly ahead was the entrance gate. A guardhouse on our right, across the road from a cluster of young pines and brush, was the last landmark as we stood outside the gates. Beyond the barbed wire stood a row of barracks backed by a large open square. No bigger than a football field, the complex was surrounded by a belt of open country surrounded by pinewoods…

The commandant Feix told us to stand in two rows. Afterwards, he went up to one of the Jews and told him to leave the rank and ordered him to undress. He then began undressing; he removed his overcoat and Feix started shouting: "Hurry up - undress completely!" This went on until he was altogether naked, and then he drew a revolver and killed this Jew and said: "This is what will happen to each one of you if you do not hand over everything you have, and this is only an example." He demanded gold, silver, good clothes, suitcases, and so on ... On the same day, he saw a man of advanced age, an old man, and his first words were: "You old dog - are you still alive?" And he ordered the Ukrainians to shoot him and kill him - and he went off. Then we surrounded the old man, and the Ukrainians were unable to find him. By chance, the commandant came back to the camp half an hour or an hour later and saw the old man - he drew his revolver and shot him. He was a very popular doctor from Warsaw, very much loved by the Jews of Warsaw - Dr Pupko. He was well known, firstly because he was an Orthodox Jew: he prayed every day with his phylacteries and prayer shawl; he would not write any prescriptions on the Sabbath, and, apart from that, he was known and loved, for he had done a great deal as a doctor for the poor Jews and had attended to them without payment." Wdowinski related another incident involving a prisoner named Bitter, who had been discovered with money on his person. Feix had beaten him and then commanded that Bitter should be hanged. But the rope broke. Feiks, deciding it was not necessary to hang Bitter again and not wishing to waste a bullet on a Jew, ordered that his fellow Jews would kill Bitter. A roll call was ordered. Each of 2,000 Jews was given a stick and forced to beat Bitter to death. In the autumn of 1942, approximately 100 sick or elderly persons and children were sent to Belzec. In August 1943, a further 200 prisoners classified as sick and unfit for work were transported to Majdanek for extermination. Many prisoners died in the camp itself due to the inhuman conditions; hunger, disease, and maltreatment. A decree, issued by Oswald Pohl on 2 September 1943, announced that with effect from 1 November, the Lublin labour camps would be subordinated to the Ministry of Munitions and Armaments. In order to prevent this from happening, and thereby losing control of these valuable resources, the SS declared that the labour camps were branches of Majdanek. Eventually, Budzyn was declared a concentration camp and made a sub-camp of Majdanek on 13 February 1944.

By that time, all of the other work camps in the Lublin region had been liquidated in the Aktion Erntefest in November 1943. Only the workers at the Heinkel factory at Budzyn were spared from this massacre because of the continuing importance of aircraft production, but even there, most elderly people had been selected and taken to Majdanek for execution. One of the Jewish cleaners in the camp, Jacob Katz, saved the lives of seven elderly Jews at this time by hiding them under mattresses.

After Budzyn was subordinated to Majdanek, the conditions of life in the camp improved. All prisoners were removed from the old camp to the new barracks closer to the factory. They had to wear prisoner clothing from Majdanek and they received numbers. All executions, which were fewer in number in 1944, had to be conducted in accordance with concentration camp

regulations.

Even

the

food

was

better

then

before.

Although bad enough, conditions at Budzyn became relatively bearable in comparison to other labour camps, largely due to the efforts of Noah Stockman of Brest-Litovsk, the camp elder, who even managed to persuade the camp administration to allow Passover to be celebrated in the camp in spring 1944. In May 1944, as the Red Army began to approach the Lublin District, the factory installations and some of the workforce were transferred to the salt mine in Wieliczka. Other prisoners were dispersed to camps at SkarzyskoKamienna, Starachowice, Mielec and Ostrowiec, as well as to Majdanek itself. Included among those transferred to Mielec was Manfred Heyman, born in Stettin and deported from there to the Belzyce Ghetto in February 1940. He had been sent to Budzyn at the age of 14. Transferred yet again to another aircraft factory near KZ Flossenbürg, he survived a death march from that camp and was liberated by American troops on 29 April 1945.

Trial:

Hamburg, 1974 Hantke, Otto - Life imprisonment Mic., Georg - 12 years Polizei SSPF Lublin, Haftstättenpersonal ZAL Budzyn Deportation of at least 300,000 Jews to KL Treblinka and shooting of several thousand Jews in course of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. Deportation of at least 15,000 Jews to KL Treblinka and Auschwitz as well

as forced labour camps in the Lublin District in course of the liquidation of the Bialystok Ghetto. Killing of Jewish forced labourers at ZAL Budzyn and Krasnik.

Sources:

Gutman, Israel, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1990 Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2003 Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust – The Jewish Tragedy, William Collins Sons & Co. Limited, London, 1986 Gilbert, Martin. The Boys – Triumph Over Adversity, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1996 Marszalek, Josef. Majdanek – The Concentration Camp in Lublin, Interpress, Warsaw 1986 Marszalek, Jozef. Obozy pracy w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie w latach 1939-1945 (The Work Camps in Generalgouvernement in the years 1939 1945). Lublin 1998. Topas, George. Iron Furnace – A Holocaust Survivor's Story, The University Press of Kentucky, 1990 Wyszogrod, Morris. A Brush with Death. An Artist in the Death Camps. New York 1999 Orenstein, Harry. I Shall Live. Surviving the Holocaust 1939-1945. Oxford University Press 1988 Archive of the Majdanek State Museum, Collection of the Jewish testimonies. www.clab.com.pl./regionalista/budzyn.htm www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/sessions/session067-05.html

Source : http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/budzyn.html

CAMP MAP

The Budzyn Labour camp was situated 5km / 3 miles northwest of the town of Krasnik. A military – industrial complex including an aircraft factory was established on the premises of a former munitions factory in 1937 -38. Following the German invasion of Poland, the complex was taken over by the Herman Goring Werke, a huge industrial concern, operating steel works, mines and other heavy industries throughout occupied Europe. The aircraft factory was operated by the Heinkel Company – Heinkel Flugzeugwerke. Near this establishment a slave – labour camp for Jews, in which eventually nearly 3000 Jewish prisoners were interned, was established in the autumn of 1942. 500 Jews were brought to the Budzyn labour camp in November 1942 these came from mainly from Krasnik and other adjacent towns and villages. The local ghetto at Krasnik was liquidated in November 1942 where the majority of the Jews were deported to the Belzec death camp, others were shot at the Krasnik Jewish cemetery or selected to work in Budzyn. Shortly after that a further 400 Jewish Polish Prisoners of War were brought from the Konskowola camp and the Lipowa Street camp in Lublin. From its inception in Budzyn Jewish Prisoners of War performed as functionaries and they retained the uniforms of the Polish army. At the beginning of 1943 the last Jews from the Belzyce ghetto, including women and children were also sent to Budzyn. Among this group were German Jews deported to Belzyce from Stettin in 1940 and from Leipzig in 1942. During the crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising 800 Jews arrived from Warsaw at the end of April 1943 and the beginning of May 1943. Included in the above were 150 Jewish workers who had worked at the Okecie Airfield in Warsaw prior to the uprising in the ghetto. The final group of Jewish prisoners were sent to Budzyn on 10 July 1943 from Hrubieszow following the liquidation of the ghetto there. By mid-1943 the had

camp

population

risen

approximately

to 3000,

including 300 women and children.

Map of the Budzyn Labour Camp

Thanks to a Polish Home Army report (AK – Armia Krajowa) from Krasnik dated 15 March 1944 the precise number of inmates are known – 2457 Jews including 319 women. This figure is lower than the 1943 amount as a result of executions – the prisoners worked in the aircraft factories, in construction and general services. Leo Freitag provided a statement in 1968 in New York regarding Budzyn: “At the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942 I went from Krasnik to KZ Budzyn. When I am told that the Budzyn camp was, at the beginning a Zwangsarbeitslager and then later a KZ, then I think I came there at the time it was a labour camp. That was the time when the Jews were taken out of Krasnik. We wore civilian clothing – only later did we get the striped clothing. The time of the change-over I can no longer remember exactly. It was either 1942 or 1943. I worked in Budzyn – as in all the camps I was in – as a joiner. During the construction of the factory I made, for example, tables and doors, everything expected of a joiner. The head of the joinery workshop was an ethnic German by the name of Karl. He was a civilian. Of the guard detachment I remember especially well Feix and Hantke. There was also one with a name which sounded like Acker or Ackerman. When the name Axmann is mentioned to me, then I am sure this is the man I am thinking of. When the name Josef Leipold is mentioned to me, then I can now remember him very clearly. He was I believe an SS- Quatermaster Sergeant. He was the last commandant of the camp. He went with us to Brunnlitz. Not all the other guards came with us. In the course of time the younger SS- men were replaced by older SS-people and invalids. The younger ones went to the Front – this was not in connection with the changeover from a ZAL to a KZ. The names mentioned to me of Wilhelm Kleist and Friedrich Buschbaum, mean nothing to me. When I was told that the conditions in the KZ were an improvement compared to the ZAL, then I must say to that, that the conditions in many respects were better in many ways, and in many others worse. Before civilians also had power over us and could kill prisoners. Afterwards, only the SS could kill prisoners.

Once, we came back from work in the evening and had to fall –in for roll call. A man was called out on whom money had been found. All the prisoners had to beat him, then he was finished off with a bullet by the SS.

Budzyn Labour Camp

The exact date of this incident

I

cannot

remember. I don’t know if at that time we already wore the striped clothing. When asked who carried out this roll call, I think that the camp commandant was present. The commandant at this time was Feix. On another occasion, some prisoners were given an axe on their work-free Sunday and led into a small wood to cut down saplings. In my view this was only a pretext for killing the prisoners. Anyway 2 people were shot. I think that Feix and Axmann led this operation. I also remember well that one morning when we came out of the barracks, a German Jew was hanged on the roll call square. He had been an officer in the German army. The SS had hanged him. (See the testimony by Dr David Wdowinski). Another time 2 Jews were drowned in the latrines because they had bought civilian jackets from Poles. At another incident 5 -7 prisoners had to spend the night outside the locked barracks. The next morning we found them dead. They had been shot by the guards. 2 of the victims were the Davidson brothers who came from Krasnik. I remember that once when we returned from work, the old, sick and the children were no longer in the camp. We were told that they were taken out of the camp in a railway wagon – and had been killed. With me in Budzyn camp were my brothers Max and Harry Freitag, and my brother- in- law Louis Adler, who all live here in New York”. Abraham Dichter from Hrubieszow gave a report on Budzyn: The boys arrived at Budzyn at the beginning of 1943. Here they again met many friends and acquaintances from Hrubieszow. Abraham was fortunate enough to get a job in the kitchen carrying coal. This was one of the most sort after jobs in the camp as it meant proximity to food. The camp was run by a Jewish Prisoner of War Stockmann under SSLagerkommandant Feix. As the camp had originally been established for Poles of Jewish origin who were POW’s, these had all the best jobs.

The new arrivals, as a rule, were slaves in the camp. Feix was a sadist who would whip, shoot or torture for his amusement. Only curiously, he had a soft spot for German Jews and would try to give them an easier time.

Abraham remembers an occasion when 2 prisoners tried to escape by digging a tunnel under the barracks into the woods. Unfortunately the tunnel caved in under the barbed wire. One of the escapees was shot, the other captured. The latter was hung up for days by his hands, which he could never use again after this torture. The night after the attempt all the prisoners had to stand in the snow for a whole night. The daily routine at Budzyn was as follows: 5.00am – parade and count of prisoners. They were then left to stand for an hour whilst the SS had their breakfast. 6.00am – working parties went out to work in the aircraft factory. Lunch –time – the parties returned to the camp for food, consisting of cabbage soup. Evening – parties returned for a meal consisting of cabbage soup and a quarter pound of bread. Then the prisoners went to their bunks, 5 above one another. Although they had no blankets there were so many in each barrack that they were warm enough. An incident Abraham remembers with amusement was another escape attempt. At the time Abraham and several other prisoners were working in the kitchen. The German guards, furious about the attempt, turned their machine-guns onto the camp and started shooting it up. As the kitchen was one of the few places where the lights were still on, it became an immediate target for the guns. Abraham and the others hid in the huge copper kettles, impenetrable by bullets, which were used to make the daily cabbage soup – and saved their lives. Although they might easily all have been killed, this incident was welcomed by Abraham, for it broke the terrible monotony of camp life. Five prisoners were killed on this occasion. During 1943, a new camp was built nearer the aircraft factory and the prisoners were transferred to this. The new camp was a KZ and all the prisoners were issued with regulation striped uniform – except Stockmann, who was allowed to keep his Polish uniform. Conditions were slightly better than at the previous camp, partly because no Ukrainian guards were used, as some had recently deserted, and the

Ukrainians had been much worse than the Germans themselves, committing acts of the most appalling cruelty. In the middle of 1943 Abraham Dichter went with a large transport to Majdanek Concentration camp. At the Adolf Eichmann trial a survivor of Budzyn Dr David Wdowinski described how he had been deported to Majdanek in May 1943 after being captured during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, A few days later he was transferred to Budzyn, together with 806 other Jews. He described their arrival at Budzyn: “Turning, we sighted Camp Budzyn about a quarter-mile distant, this was a genuine SS camp, a fenced-in rectangle flanked by four towers, one at each corner. Looking out from the top of these were armed Ukrainian guards manning machine-guns. Directly ahead was the entrance gate. A guard house on our right, across the road from a cluster of young pines and brush, was the last landmark as we stood outside the gates. Beyond the barbed wire stood a row of barracks backed by a large open square. No bigger than a football field the complex was surrounded by a belt of open country surrounded by pinewoods. The commandant Feix told us to stand in two rows. Afterwards he went up to one of the Jews and told him to leave the rank and ordered him to undress. He then began undressing, he removed his overcoat and Feix started shouting “ Hurry up – undress completely”. This went on until he was altogether naked and then he drew a revolver and killed this Jew and said “This is what will happen to each one of you, if you do not hand over everything you have, and this is only an example”. He demanded gold, silver, good clothes, suitcases and so on. On the same day, he saw a man of advanced age, an old man and his first words were “You old dog – are you still alive?”

Budzyn Document

And he ordered the Ukrainians to shoot him and kill him – and he went off. Then we surrounded the old man and the Ukrainians were unable to find him.

By chance the commandant came back to the camp half an hour or an hour later and saw the old man – he drew his revolver and shot him. He was a very popular doctor from Warsaw very much loved by the Jews of Warsaw – Dr Pupko. He was well- known, firstly because he was an Orthodox Jew, he prayed every day with his phylacteries and prayer shawl. He would not write any prescriptions on the Sabbath and apart from that, he was known and loved, for he had done a great deal as a doctor for the poor Jews and had attended to them without payment. Wdowinski related another incident involving a prisoner named Bitter, who had been discovered with money on his person. Feix had beaten him and then commanded that Bitter should be hanged. But the rope broke. Feix decided it was not necessary to hang Bitter again and not wishing to waste a bullet on a Jew, ordered that his fellow Jews would kill Bitter. A roll-call was ordered. Each of the 2000 Jews was given a stick and forced to beat Bitter to death. A decree issued by Oswald Pohl, head of WVHA on 2 September 1943 announced that with effect from 1 November 1943 the Lublin labour camps would be subordinated to the Ministry of Munitions and Armaments. In order to prevent this from happening and thereby losing control of these valuable resources, the SS declared that the labour camps were branches of Majdanek on 13 February 1944. Budzyn officially became a concentration camp and became a sub-camp of Majdanek on 13 February 1944. Budzyn’s Jewish workers at the Heinkel factory were spared the fate of the other Jewish workers in the Lublin area, when all the Jewish workers in the labour camps were liquidated during the Aktion Erntefest in November 1943. But even at Budzyn most elderly Jews had been selected and deported to Majdanek to their deaths. One of the Jewish cleaners in the camp Jacob Katz saved the lives of seven elderly Jews at this time by hiding them under mattresses. After Budzyn was subordinated to Majdanek the living conditions in the camp improved. All prisoners were removed from the old camp to the new barracks closer to the factory. They had to wear prisoner clothing from Majdanek they received numbers and better food. All executions which were fewer in number during 1944 had to be conducted in accordance with concentration camp regulations. Whilst no paradise, conditions at Budzyn were more favourable than other labour camps, and the efforts of Noah Stockmann from Brest-LItovsk, the camp

elder, who managed to persuade the camp administration to allow the Passover to be celebrated in the camp in the spring of 1944. In May 1944 as the Soviet army began to approach the Lublin district, the factory installations and some of the workforce were transferred to the salt mine in Weiliczka. Other prisoners were dispersed to camps at SkarzyskoKamienna, Starachowice, Mielec, Ostrowiec and Majdanek. Among those transferred to Mielec was Manfred Heyman, born in Stettin and deported there to the Belzyce ghetto in February 1940. He had been sent to Budzyn aged 14 years old. He was transferred again to another aircraft factory near the Flossenburg concentration camp. He survived a death march from Flossenburg, and was liberated by American troops on 29 April 1945. After the war he settled in London, England. The first commandant of Budzyn was SS-Oberscharfuhrer Otto Hantke, he was succeeded by SS- Oberscharfuhrer Heinrich Stoschek. Before taking up his position in Budzyn Hantke had been in the Lipowa Street Camp in Lublin, and he was sent to Krasnik personally by Odilo Globocnik, SSPF Lublin, as a “good organiser”. Hantke was responsible for the selection during the final liquidation of the Krasnik ghetto. He personally selected at Budzyn those who were fit, those who were sick he selected to be deported to the Belzec death camp. This selection was was organised in accordance with an order from Christian Wirth, the Inspector of the “Aktion Reinhard” murder programme. After the war Otto Hantke was tried in Hamburg in 1974 and he was sentenced to life imprisonment, the deputy commandant Wilhelm Kleist was living in 1968 in the “Railway Hotel” in Homburg, Krs, Stade. The next and most brutal commander of Budzyn was SS-Oberscharfuhrer Reinhold Feix from December 1942 until August 1943. Feix came to Budzyn after service in the Belzec death camp. Feix was replaced by Otto Mohr, who was only commandant for a short time, and in the late summer of 1943 he was replaced by SSOberscharfuhrer Tauscher, who also had served at Belzec death camp. Tauscher was replaced by an SS – NCO Frank. Whilst he was not in charge for very long Frank ruthlessly suppressed a mass escape attempt in the winter of 1943. The final commandant was SS-Obersturmfuhrer Josef Leipold, who shot himself in the foot to avoid a possible transfer to frontline service.

Sources:

Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust – Macmillan Publishing Company New York 1990 The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg – published by Yale University Press, New Haven 2003 The Hoocaust by Sir Martin Gilbert –published by William Collins London 1986 The Boys – Triumph over Adversity by Sir Martin Gilbert published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson London 1996 Majdanek – The Concentration Camp in Lublin by Josef Marszalek – published by Interpress Warsaw 1986 Obozy pracy w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie w latach 1939 -1945 – The Work Camps in the Generalgouvernement in the years 1939 -45 – Lublin 1998. Iron Furnace – A Holocaust Survivors Story by George Topas – published by the University Press of Kentucky 1990. A Brush with Death. An Artist in the Death Camps by Morris Wyszogrod – New York 1999 I Shall Live – Surviving the Holocaust 1939 -45 – published by Oxford University Press 1988 Archives of the Majdanek State Museum – Collection of Jewish Testimonies Holocaust Historical Society

Source : http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/labour%20camps/Budzyn/budzyn.html

:

THE LEO FREITAG STATEMENT Statement sworn at the Consulate General of the Federal German Republic in New York on 12 August 1968

Photo of Jews from the Krasnik Ghetto

At the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942 I went from Krasnik to KZ Budzyn. When I am told that the Budzyn camp was, at the beginning a Zwangsarbeitslager and then later a KZ, when I think that I came there at the time it was a labour camp.

That was at the time when the Jews were taken out of Krasnik. We wore civilian clothing. Only later did we get the striped clothing. The time of the change-over I can no longer remember exactly. It was either 1942 or 1943.

As the Russians approached the camp was disbanded. We went next to Wieliczka, then to Gross Rosen via Plaszow and finally to Brunnlitz in Czechoslovakia, where we were liberated.

I worked in Budzyn – as in all the camps I was in – as a joiner. During the construction of the factory I made for example, tables and doors, everything expected of a joiner. The head of the joinery workshop was an ethnic German by the name of Karl, he was a civilian.

Of the guard detachment I remember especially well Feix and Hantke. There was also one with a name which sounded like Acker or Ackermann. When the name Axmann is mentioned to me, then I am sure this is the man I am thinking of.

When the name Josef Leipold is mentioned to me, then I can now remember him very clearly. He was, I believe, an SS- Quartermaster Sgt. He was the last Commandant of the camp. He went with us to Brunnlitz.

Not all the other guards came with us. In the course of time the younger SS- men were replaced by older SS-people and invalids. The younger ones went to the Front. This was not in connection with the change over from a ZAL to a KZ. Road sign indicating "leaving Budzyn"

The names mentioned to me of Wilhelm

Kleist

and

Friedrich

Buschbaum, mean nothing to me. When I am told that the conditions in the

KZ

were

an

improvement

compared to the ZAL, then I must say to that, that the conditions in many respects were better in many ways, and in many others worse.

Before civilians also had power over us and could kill prisoners, afterwards only the SS could kill prisoners. When asked whether prisoners were killed at that time, I think one day a prisoner was killed. The perpetrator, I remember was Feix. I can remember the following single case:

Once, we came back from work in the evening and had to fall-in for roll call. A man was called out on whom money had been found. All the prisoners had to beat him, then he was finished off with a bullet by the SS.

The exact date of this incident I cannot remember. I don’t know if, at that time, we already wore the striped clothing. When asked who carried out the roll call, I think that the camp commandant was present. The commandant at this time was Feix.

On another occasion, some prisoners were given an axe on their work-free Sunday and led into a small wood to cut down saplings. In my view, this was only a pretext for killing the prisoners.

Anyway 2 people were shot. I think that Feix and Leipold led this operation. When I am reminded that Feix and Leipold were probably not in the camp at the same time, then I am certain that Feix took part, the other man could have been Axmann. I also remember well that one morning when we came out of the barracks, a German Jew was hanged on the roll call square. He had been an officer in the German army.

The SS had hanged him, I did not see it myself. I do not know the reason for this hanging. Another time 2 Jews were drowned in the latrine, who had bought their jackets from Poles. They were civilian jackets.

Jewish

inmates

from

forced labour camps in Poland

At another incident 5-7 prisoners had to spend the night outside the locked barracks. The next morning we found them dead. They had been shot by the guards. I cannot give an exact date for this deed. I also cannot say who among the Germans took part in the killing.

2 of the victims were the Davidson brothers who came from Krasnik. This incident must have happened in September or October. It was not so cold that the victims froze to death.

When asked if I heard the shots in the night, then I cannot remember about it. Perhaps the Germans had simply kicked the victims to death with their boots. I am sure this incident happened during the time of the KZ.

I think that we already wore the striped clothing. The barracks lay within sight of the factory – on the other side of the road, and we were taken there under guard – a 10-15 minute walk. Some of the people also slept near the factory building.

Schindler with Former Inmates of the Brunnlitz Camp

I remember that once when we returned from work, the old and sick people and the children were no longer in the camp. We were told that they were taken out of the camp in a railway wagon – and had been killed.

When asked whether I can remember any killings by Leipold, I cannot remember any such case….

Now it occurs to me that shortly before the liberation of Brunnlitz, Leipold wanted to throw a couple of hand-grenades among the prisoners whilst drunk.

He was prevented from doing so by Schindler, the German owner of the factory in Brunnlitz. With me in Budzyn camp, were my brothers Max and Harry Freitag, and my brother-in –law Louis Adler, who all live here in New York.

Sources: Holocaust Historical Society Yad Vashem GFH USHMM

Source: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/labour%20camps/Budzyn/leofreitag.html

ABOUT COMMANDER FEIX F EIX, Reinhold SS Hauptscharführer 03/07/1909 - ?/?/1969 (BDC)

BACKGROUND: From Gablonz (on the Neisse river). Tall, fair, typical Aryan appearance. Probably policeman. Came from Trawniki.

Feix's paybook

SERVICE AT BELZEC: According to Franciszek Piper (member of the editorial staff of nd

2

edition of Reder's testimony) Feix commanded the Ukrainian crew (Trawnikis), num bering about 60 – 80 persons.

Rudolf Reder stated: "Feix practiced cruelty in a different way. It was said he came from Gablonz on the Neisse and was married and the father of two children. He spoke the way intelligent people speak. He talked quickly. If someone failed to understand him at once, he beat him and screamed to the high heavens like a madman. Once, when he ordered the kitchen painted, and a Jewish doctor of chemistry was doing it, standing right at the top of a ladder just under the ceiling, Feix ordered him to climb down every few minutes and beat him across the face with his riding crop, so that the man's face was swelled up and was covered with blood. That was how he did his job. Feix seemed abnormal. He played the violin. He ordered the orchestra to play the Polish melody "Highlander, have you no regrets?" until they dropped. He commanded people to sing and dance and he toyed with them and tortured them. The beast went amok."

FATE: After Belzec ordered to Budzyn labour camp as Lagerführer in spring 1943.

COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUE TO THE MEMORY OF THE MURDERED IN BUDZYN

ON THE ROAD KRAŚNIK-URZĘDÓW THERE IS A COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUE TO THE MEMORY OF THE MURDERED IN BUDZYŃ. IT WAS SET BY THE KRAŚNIK SCOUTS.

THE PLAY IN THE PRESS

April 30, 2010

A Shoah play, decades in the making From a Nazi camp to a Harvard stage By Elise Kigner Advocate Staff Director Dr. Guila Clara Kessous and survivor Henry Newman. In 1943, Henry Newman was a prisoner at a labor camp in Budzyn, Poland. Knowing he had studied theater, the camp’s commandant asked the 21-year-old to stage a play with prisoners as the actors. There was one more thing: The play better make him laugh; Newman’s life depended on it. “I’ll tell you what I want to do. I want a little humor in this camp, real humor, Jewish humor, so I want you to stage a show, and it better be good,” the commandant told Newman. “Make us all laugh and if you don’t, I’ll hang you upside down.” What happened next? You’ll have to see the play about the play, “Budzyn,” which premieres with a single performance May 6 at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. Decades after the war, Newman, now 88 and living in New Castle, N.Y., penned his recollections of the camp in a 20-page manuscript. It wound up in the hands of Boston area director and producer Dr. Guila Clara Kessous. May 6 was chosen for the premiere as it is the World Day of Prayer. The performance, hosted by Harvard Hillel, includes music, dance and prayer. During the prologue, the audience will sit in the dark and listen to the recorded voices of Holocaust survivors speaking in the varied languages of their concentration camps. The last voice will be that of Newman: “My name is Henry S. Newman and this is my life story: An incident that happened to me and everything there is true. This is not a fiction play. Remember that.” Irving Fine Society Singers & Ensemble will perform music by Edwin Geist, himself a victim of the Holocaust, as dancers portray a swastika and the letters of G-d’s name, and reach out

to the audience. Thanks in part to his musical talent, Geist was released from a concentration camp and managed to get his wife freed as well. But months later, he was rearrested and shot; his wife, Lyda, then committed suicide. Geist’s niece, Holocaust survivor Rosian Zerner of Newton, and her son, Lang, are also participating in the performance. “I don’t want to make a narrative of suffering,” Kessous said. “I want to force each artistic expression to be another media to transmit the Shoah.” The play opens with an older Newman writing a memoir about Budzyn. It then shifts to Passover in the Warsaw Ghetto. Henry Newman and his brother, Benjamin, are transported to Budzyn. In his manuscript, Newman wrote that 12 prisoners were hanged the night before his camp play was to premiere. Kessous symbolizes this with four people dancing to a Yiddish song about a pogrom, “The Shtetl is Burning.” The play concludes with a memorial service led by Zerner, commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. It will also include a remembrance of Poland’s top leaders who were killed in a plane crash on their way to a service at the site of a World War II Russian massacre of Polish officers. Participating are Cambridge Mayor David Maher; Lori Gross, Harvard associate provost for Arts and Culture; Rick Mann, president of the New England Holocaust Memorial; Marek Lesniewski-Laas, Poland’s honorary consul; and Rony Yedidia, Israel’s deputy consul general to New England. “[Prayers] will be said, not to Gd, but to us,” said Kessous, who is Modern Orthodox. “That is why I am doing this on the World Day of Prayer. The first thing we need to pray for is respect among each other, and praying for the way that we treat each other.” Kessous, a native of France, received a doctorate at Boston University two years ago under the mentorship of Elie Wiesel. She has directed and produced two works by Wiesel in Boston: “Once Upon a Time” and “The Trial of God.” Kessous is working on a post-doctorate at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies on theater and human rights. She was recently nominated as Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. Under the direction of Kessous, Harvard senior Vanda Gyuris adapted the manuscript, and sophomore Betty Rosen served as the assistant director. The dances were choreographed by Cherina Carmel Eisenberg, an artist and a fifthgrade teacher at Temple Israel of Boston. The music is conducted by Nicholas Alexander Brown, director and founder of The Irving Fine Society Singers & Ensemble. Newman said he acted as “director of the director,” consulting by phone with Kessous through the production process. Newman addressed the show’s crew through a video message: “You’re working for a terrific director. Trust her. Follow her lead, and I promise you you’ll get the greatest satisfaction of your life. And this is one show that you will never forget. This is my promise.” The play covers only a small part of Newman’s experiences during the Holocaust. He participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and was imprisoned in several camps, Budzyn

being the first. When he was liberated from Dachau, he weighed 91 pounds. He was the only member left of his family. In 1998, Newman published “Unwanted Journey,” a book about adapting to life in America. Kessous said she changes her approach to directing when she does a Holocaust play. She tells the actors that they should not even attempt to put themselves in the shoes of camp inmates. “We need to be extremely humble when we come onstage, when we are touching the Shoah,” Kessous said. “No matter what we think, no matter all our efforts, we will never experience the pain they had.” To recruit actors, the director met the greater Boston chapter of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust. Isaac Jack Trompetter, 68, plays the part of Newman as an older adult. He sits on stage during the show, writing about the Holocaust. Trompetter was four months old when his parents hid him with elderly Christian fundamentalist farmers in the Netherlands. Of the period, he recalled only being rushed into a closet, where he rocked on a hobby horse and listened to bombing. He was 3 when he was reunited with his parents at war’s end. Trompetter has yet to meet Newman, though he has seen a video of him and read about Budzyn. At the play, he hopes they’ll meet. “He’ll be sitting in the audience, and I’ll be looking at him as I do my very brief lines.” “Budzyn,” May 6 at 8 p.m. at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. Call 617-496-2222 or visit www.budzyntheplay.com. http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/news/2010-0430/Top_News/A_Shoah_play_decades_in_the_making.html

SPONSORS THE CENTER FOR EUROPEAN STUDIES…

THE

MINDA

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EUROPEAN STUDIES is dedicated to fostering the study of European history, politics, culture, and society at Harvard. Through our graduates, who go on to teach others about Europe and to many other roles in society, the Center sustains America's knowledge base about Europe, an important contribution to international understanding in difficult times. The Center was founded as a catalyst to bring scholars and students together to talk and think about Europe. As such, it creates an intellectual community that is more than the sum of its parts. That community is open to everyone with interests in Europe.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY HILLEL

HARVARD HILLEL is the catalyst for Jewish life, community and personal exploration at this great university. Our pressing challenge is centered on students' active and self-conscious choice to be Jewish, to explore the relevance of Jewish tradition to their own lives, to become active participants in a vital and dynamic culture, and to contribute with force and vision both to the Jewish community and the world at large. Inherent in this challenge is the opportunity for Hillel to contribute to a renaissance of Jewish life in America and beyond. Harvard Hillel considers every Jewish student as an actor in and author of the on-going story of the Jewish people from ancient days until the present. Our mission, therefore, is to provide every Jewish Harvard student—without regard to ideological commitment or background— appropriate grounding for making meaningful Jewish choices in a complex and changing world.

COMBINED JEWISH PHILANTHROPIES CJP, GREATER BOSTON’S JEWISH FEDERATION, brings together the people, partners and resources to fulfill

the

most

important

needs and aspirations of our community. Rooted we

in

care

compassion for

the

and

justice

vulnerable,

forge

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driven

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THE IRVING FINE SOCIETY SINGERS & ENSEMBLE

THE IRVING FINE SOCIETY SINGERS & ENSEMBLE was founded in 2006 by music director Nicholas Alexander Brown in honor of Irving Fine, one of the most important American composers of the 20th century and the founder of the Brandeis University School of the Creative Arts. It is a collective of musicians dedicated to celebrating the music of 20th and 21st century composers who have made significant contributions to the longevity of classical music. The society seeks to expose the Greater Boston community to the music of these magnificent composers, music that is unique and a combination of traditional classical music and modern techniques. Past performances have included major choral works, chamber works and solo works by Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Faure, Irving Fine, Paul Hindemith, Olivier Messiaen, Franz Schubert, Erwin Schulhoff and Richard Wagner, with appearances at the Goethe-Institut Boston and Brandeis University. The Irving Fine Society Singers & Ensemble have participated annually in the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts at Brandeis since 2006. In 2008 The Irving Fine Society Singers & Ensemble presented the U.S. premieres of selected works by Edwin Geist, a composer who was tragically lost during the Holocaust. The Society is proud to continue its collaboration with Rosian Zerner, Edwin Geist’s niece, in advocating his music internationally. The 2009-2010 Season brings performances of works by Aaron Copland (in honor of his 110th Birthday), Claude Debussy, Irving Fine and Edwin Geist. For more information, please visit www.irvingfinesociety.org

A PERFECT TASTE A DIVISION OF NRM CATERING, INC. NRM Catering/A Perfect Taste has been prominent in the kosher community for several years - opening our Newton commissary in 2001. With an incredible amount of hard work and creativity, we were able to grow ourselves into one of the largest kosher catering companies in New England. While growth is welcome and wonderful, it brought with it the need for more operating space. The staff at NRM Catering/A Perfect Taste is forever grateful for the support provided by the Newton community during our beginnings. In 2007, we determined that a larger facility was necessary. Our move to Stoughton not only provided a new spacious set of kitchens, but also a retail storefront, which we named A Perfect Taste. The storefront provides ready-made meals and kosher ingredients that are ideal for the modern kosher lifestyle. The store has been doing extremely well - customers not only love the products, but they also love our name! At the moment, NRM Catering is the business name for the social and event catering services. A Perfect Taste is the business name for corporate functions and the retail store. It's confusing - we know - so with that in mind, we have begun the process of changing the name for the entire company over to A Perfect Taste.

Our Love of Kosher NRM Catering/A Perfect Taste maintains two separate kitchens; one for meat and one for dairy, under the Orthodox supervision of the Vaad Harabonim of Massachusetts. From contemporary gourmet entrées to traditional Jewish recipes, we can serve up the perfect meal for your next kosher catered event. One of our kosher catering specialists will guide you through planning a customized menu specific to your tastes. We have extensive menus which are adjustable to your preferences. To truly understand our aptitude, we encourage you to contact us for consultation or a tasting.

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NRM Catering is committed to quality and personalized service. "Our management philosophy is quite simple," says Neil Morris, President of NRM Catering, INC., "Listen to the customer, do it perfectly, and never compromise quality."

GREATER BOSTON COMMUNITY CENTER FOR THE ARTS, BCCA

Break The Silence! Foundation Brookline Community Center for the Arts, Genuine Voices, and Boston Music Conference (BMC) are working together to establish a new arts facility under one roof for a common goal as the Greater Boston Community Center for the Arts (BCCA). This will provide positive options to inner city children and adults who will learn how to use their abilities and cultivate their talents with programs including music, film-making, visual arts, acting, world dance forms, martial arts, fitness, and art appreciation. Our collaboration with community outreach organizations such as The Boys and Girls Club and Berklee College of Music will extend our ability to make a difference in the community by providing young people a safe place to learn and grow. Through guidance and positive reinforcement, we will support their needs to rise above challenges by utilizing creative outlets to express themselves in productive ways. The Center will provide arts education, practice and performance facilities, instructor training and new teaching opportunities for artists and students. We will host community events and provide performance opportunities for emerging artists to showcase their progress and collaborate with established artists as role models. Through the use of multimedia, telecommunication, and Internet technology, we will promote the pursuit of thriving careers and contribute to the creation of an extended network of artists and institutions in all different social and economic communities locally, nationally, and internationally.

MANY THANKS TO THE GREATER BOSTON CHILD SURVIVOR GROUP…

The Boston Group was started in June, 1983, by a survivor of Auschwitz after 1 1/2 years of searching for fellow child survivors in the Boston area. At that time she approached dozens of people, many of whom initially responded that they are not interested because they felt that they wanted to live for the present and the future and didn't want to keep thinking about the past. The majority of these people eventually became solid members of the group. Others didn't consider themselves 'survivors' since they didn't go to any of the camps. Early on, the Boston Group decided that it wants to include all the Jewish children of Europe, who, during World War II. were hiding, in camps, in ghettos, on the run or forced to escape the continent. In other words, a member could be any Jewish person who, starting as a child of 13 years or under, experienced Nazi persecution. Since those early days the group has gone through many phases and changes, however it still has some of its original members. Presently the group meets on the third Sunday of every month. Two hours of discussion (the subject is decided at the previous meeting) is followed by a Social-hour with food and drinks. Two members volunteer for twelve month periods, to act as Treasurer and to write a monthly news-letter that is mailed approximately to 50 members. There are about 15 to 25 people at the meetings. Over the years more than 150 people have been members of this group. Every third meeting, all Holidays and special occasions are open to spouses, 'significant others' and children of Child Survivors, the rest of the meetings are for the Survivors only. We spent several very memorable Seders together, where we were reading our own specially created Holocaust Haggadah. Many lasting friendships have developed among our members and most of us see each other socially, between meetings. While a wide range of work and professional areas are represented, somehow, we have more than a fair share of people from the 'helping professions'. Members originate from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania and Russia. Through the years, we cried together and laughed together. Hurt each other and helped each other. Some left the group and never returned, others left and could not stay away for long. None of us could tell now, how long we shall keep meeting regularly, but we all hope that we shall be there for each other, when we need someone to be there.

…AND TO HARVARD UNIVERSITY MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY SERVICES Instructional Media Services (IMS) is part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Its two divisions, Media & Technology Services (MTS) and The Media Production Center (MPC), provide a wide range of services to help the Harvard community integrate multimedia for curricular, administrative, research, and special events.