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...
Lost Childhood
A three-act, full-length opera based on Dr. Yehuda Nir’s memoir of his childhood hiding from the Nazis in Poland during World War II, and on conversations with Dr. Gottfried Wagner. When Nir’s father was arrested in 1941, Yehuda was eleven years old, and in order to survive, he, his mother, and his teenage sister moved from place to place disguised as Polish Catholics. In the opera, Yehuda’s character Judah Gruenfeld opens up after 50 years of silence to a colleague and psychiatrist, Manfred Geyer (portraying Dr. Wagner), a German born after World War II and the son of a prominent family of Nazi sympathizers. Manfred’s questions open the floodgates and memories come rushing back.
Format: Opera
Notes:
Janice Hamer (composer); Mary Azrael (librettist); commissioned and developed by American Opera Projects.
Snapshot
Original or Prominent Production:
November 9, 2013, The National Philharmonic presented the first complete concert performance of the opera at the Music Center at Strathmore, North Bethesda, MD to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
November 9, 2013, The National Philharmonic presented the first complete concert performance of the opera at the Music Center at Strathmore, North Bethesda, MD to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Original Source Material: Based on the memoir The Lost Childhood by Yehuda Nir and his conversations with Gottfried Wagner.
Nationality of Author: U.S.
Original Language: English
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.