A Message from Arnold Mittelman After a career in not-for-profit and commercial theater spanning more than 40 years I was honored in 2007 to found the National Jewish Theater / Foundation and in 2010 to assume leadership of its Holocaust Theater International...
The Education of Hershl Grynszpan
Author(s): Yale Strom
The play takes place at the end of October 1938 on a train traveling from Krakow to Warsaw. Yiske Labushnick, a middle-aged Jewish man, sits down in a couchette and shares a ride with a young Jewish man, Hershl, traveling home after visiting his grandparents in Krakow. The older gentleman regales the younger man about his work and adventures as a klezmer musician. As Yiske reminisces, he reveals much about Jewish life in Poland on the eve of World War II. As the train nears its destination, we find out Yiske is not just any klezmer musician, but is working with the Jewish underground connected with the Hashomer Hatzair smuggling Jews out of Europe. His stories have a profound effect on Hershl, and the play ends with the announcement that Kristallnacht has begun.
Format: Drama with music
Cast Size:2M
Snapshot
Original or Prominent Production:
Workshopped at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, 2006; North Coast Repertory Theatre, Solana Beach, CA, 2007.
Workshopped at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, 2006; North Coast Repertory Theatre, Solana Beach, CA, 2007.
Nationality of Author: U.S.
Original Language: English with some Yiddish
Production Rights Holder:
Experience(s) Chronicled: Hiding | Escape | European Jewry Before the Holocaust | Germany, Hitler and the Growth of Nazism | Allegoric or Metaphoric Representations
HTC Insights
Views, reference and research of interest.
Lifetime Achievement Award
The National Jewish Theater Foundation presented its 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award to Alfred Uhry. The presentation took place as part of the Lincoln Center Library event on January 27th 2025 in commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
Lifetime Achievement Award
On September 30, 2024, French playwright, Mr. Jean Claude Grumberg received the Lifetime Achievement Award. It was presented by NJTF HTII President, Arnold Mittelman with Dominique Trimbur, PhD-Manager for the History of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, Teaching of the Holocaust of Fondation Pour La Memoir de la Shoah Project.