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- Comments to the Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO) Conference
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- On Resort 76: Jewish Drama and Putting the Audience Through a Difficult Evening By Bruce Cohen, MFA – the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater
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- Almost Lost
Elegy
Author(s): Ron Hirsen
Elegy portrays the relationship between a troubled young man and his Holocaust survivor parents. Shifting fluidly back and forth from New York in the 1970s to Kristallnacht and later in Berlin, brief moments at Auschwitz, and New York after the war, the play dramatizes the struggles of a second generation survivor and his father. Helmut, a poet in his youth before the war, struggles to suppress his memories of the past. Rummaging in the attic, Jerry stumbles on a poem in German and is stunned to learn of his father's poetic past. His mother asks him not to mention the poetry to his father, but Jerry cannot let his father’s poetry rest. In an effort to purge his own demons, Jerry confronts Helmut and tries to reawaken the poetry in his father’s soul.
Format: Full length
Cast Size: 3M/1F
Running time: 90 minutes
Character breakdown
Helmut, late 50s
Hilde, his wife, also late 50s
Jerry, their son, early 20s
Papa, Helmut’s father, older
Snapshot
Original Language: English
Production Rights Holder:
Ron Hirsen
Experience(s) Chronicled: Survivors and Subsequent Generations