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• The Diary of Anne Frank
  • Playwright: Frances Goodrich and Albert Hacket.

  • Resource: The Diary of Anne Frank, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hacket, Random House, 1956.

  • Abstract: The play is based on the diary that Anne Frank kept while she and her family were hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam, Holland. This play is a highly regarded classic that is especially appropriate for use in the eighth grade.

• Playing for Time
  • Playwright: Arthur Miller.

  • Resource: Playing for Time, Arthur Miller, Dramatic Publishing Company, 1985.

  • Abstract: Based on Fania Fenelon's experiences while in a concentration camp orchestra, this play describes the terrible cruelties and inhumane treatment of concentration camp inmates. The orchestra had to play for hours at a time and while prisoners were being led to their death. The play also deals with the many complex relationships of the orchestra members.

• Rescued from the Holocaust
  • Playwright: Sean Price.

  • Resource: Junior Scholastic magazine

  • Abstract: This short play tells the story of Varian Fry's mission to rescue hundreds of lives. Lesson plans also available.

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• A Shayna Maidel
  • Playwright: Barbara Lebow.

  • Resource: A Shayna Maidel, Barbara Lebow, New American Library, NY, 1988.

  • Abstract: This play is about two sisters, one who as a young girl escaped to America with her father, and the other who had scarlet fever and had to stay behind in Poland with her mother. After twenty years, the two are reunited and awkwardly renew their relationship. Rose (Rayzel) has become Americanized and accustomed to the modern world, while Lusia is still entrenched in the old world.

• Dr. Yanush Korczak
  • Playwright: Alina Kentof.

  • Resource: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust

  • Abstract: This play tells the story of Dr. Yanush Korczak, advocate of children and director of the Warsaw Orphanage. The kind doctor sacrifices his chance at freedom to accompany his orphans to the concentration camp Treblinka, where he meets his death along with the children.

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• Adam's Daughter
  • Playwright:Ronald John Vierling.

  • Resource: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust; The controlling agency is Celnor House, Goldenrod, Florida

  • Abstract: This play describes the effects of the Holocaust on the next generation. Adam is a Holocaust survivor and famous scholar who finds it difficult to talk about his experiences in the camps. His daughter, Natalie, struggles to discover her own identity and must cope with the overpowering shadow of her family's history.

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• The Attic Room
  • Playwright: Ronald John Vierling.

  • Resource: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust; The controlling agency is Celnor House, Goldenrod, Florida

  • Abstract: The Attic Room is a dream play bringing together Adam Czerniakow, a real historical figure, who was chair of the Jewish Council in the Warsaw ghetto from 1939 through 1942. When Czerniakow was called on to designate Jewish children for deportation from the ghetto, which he knew meant their deaths, he committed suicide. The attic room is Adam's hell. The fictional character is Rachael Wyze, a present day Israeli journalist, who while serving in the army witnessed the needless murder of a Palestinian girl by an Israeli sergeant. When called on to testify, she had to choose between the truth, which meant she would injure Israel, or lying, which she believed would injure Judaism. In her bitter confrontation with Adam over what she terms his failed leadership during the time of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, she admits she also committed suicide when she could not decide to decide. The play ends with the two sitting together in their shared moral damnation.

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• The Children of Moses Davar
  • Playwright: Ronald John Vierling.

  • Resource: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust; The controlling agency is Celnor House, Goldenrod, Florida

  • Abstract: A Jewish family living in Madrid, Spain, in the fifteenth century, is persecuted, divided and eventually captured by the Inquisition. Esther and her brother, David, become marranos, or false converters to Catholicism, in an effort to escape torture and death. As their family is torn apart, the brother and sister attempt to maintain their religious beliefs as Sephards despite the turmoil.

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• Dachau
  • Playwright:Ronald John Vierling.

  • Resource: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust; The controlling agency is Celnor House, Goldenrod, Florida

  • Abstract: This play tells the story of one of the infamous concentration camps, Dachau. A visitor to the camp encounters an old Jewish man hovering around the crematoria. The man is a survivor of the camp and talks to the visitor about his experiences.

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• Ghetto
  • Playwright: Joshua Sobol.

  • Resource: Plays of the Holocaust, Edited by Elinor Fuchs, Theatre Communications Group, NY, 1987.

  • Abstract: This play provides a glimpse into ghetto life. The play unfolds as a memory of a former artistic director of the Wilna ghetto theater. The play explores the life and death decisions of Mr. Gens, head of ghetto; the mixed emotions of Chaja, an actress in the troupe; and the questionable ethics of Weiskopf, a tailor. At times Ghetto is a play within a play. It contains songs that were actually sung in the ghettos. Contains explicit language.

• Korczak and the Children
  • Playwright: G. E. Farrell.

  • Resource: Longford Ltd. Publishers

  • Abstract: The story of Janusz Korczak a Polish physician and head of the Jewish Orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto who refused to stay behind to care for forced laborers while his children were sent to Treblinka. He and they perished together.

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• Letters from Jerusalem
  • Playwright: Ronald John Vierling.

  • Resource: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust; The controlling agency is Celnor House, Goldenrod, Florida

  • Abstract: This play has two main characters: a Holocaust scholar who travels to Jerusalem for the first time to visit the Yad Vashem Children's Memorial, and a Jewish female friend who lives in the States. The two exchange letters commenting on the scholar's emotional experience in Jerusalem.

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• Mister Fugue, or Earth Sick
  • Playwright: Liliane Atlan.

  • Resource: Plays of the Holocaust, edited by Elinor Fuchs, Theatre Communications Group, NY, 1987.

  • Abstract: This play won acclaim with its introduction in France in 1967. It has been performed in Poland, Israel, and the United States. The character of Mr. Fugue is loosely based on Janusz Korczak, a Polish-Jewish physician who accompanied orphaned children to Treblinka. Fugue in French translates to flight. Mister Fugue is a German soldier who is discovered befriending Jewish children. He is then to be taken to a death camp along with the children. They travel in the back of a truck. He tells stories and the children create games. The children also tell stories of marriage, children, the future, all the things they know they will not experience. Contains explicit language.

• Who Will Carry the Word?
  • Playwright: Charlotte Delbo.

  • Resource: The Theatre of the Holocaust, Edited by Robert Skloot, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1982.

  • Abstract: This play depicts the lives of women in a concentration camp. Hopelessness and death surround the characters in the play, yet the character of Claire maintains that they must not loose hope or their will to live, as someone must survive to tell the story. Charlotte Delbo, the playwright, survived Auschwitz and gives an extraordinarily accurate account in her play. The play is performed in a gray, stark manner in terms of costumes and props, reflecting the small difference between life and death in a concentration camp.