Dr. Korczak and His Children [Korczak und die Kinder]

Author(s): Erwin Sylvanus
Post-war German actors stage a play about Dr. Korczak, the head of the Warsaw Ghetto orphanage who accompanied his children to the gas chamber rather than stay behind in the ghetto. By having post-war actors deal with the issue, Sylvanus asks questions about the reverberations of the Holocaust in Germany. The play is clearly influenced by the play within a play structure that the Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello used in Six Characters in Search of an Author.
Format: Drama
Cast Size:3M/1F/1 child
Notes:

For additional reading, see Gene A. Plunka, Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 225–233.

Snapshot

Original or Prominent Production:
Schauspiel, Krefeld, West Germany, November 1, 1957
Nationality of Author: German
Original Language: German
Publisher:

New York: E.P. Dutton, 1967

Production Rights Holder:

rowohlt Theater Verlag

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