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...
Mister Fugue, or Earth Sick [Monsieur Fugue, ou le mal de terre]
Author(s): Liliane Atlan
The play dramatizes the trip of four children, sentenced to death by Nazis, in a truck on the way to their slaughter. The children act out future life events they have heard from their parents. They are accompanied by a German soldier, who is convicted of assisting Jewish children, and who is also on his way to the death camp. The character of Mr. Fugue, the German soldier, is ironically based on Janusz Korczak, who ran the ghetto orphanage in Warsaw, and who accompanied his children to the Treblinka extermination center.
Format: Drama
Notes:
For additional reading, see Gene A. Plunka, Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 65–70.
Snapshot
Original or Prominent Production:
Comédie de Sainte Étienne, Paris, France, 1967.
Comédie de Sainte Étienne, Paris, France, 1967.
Original Source Material: The character of Mr. Fugue is loosely based on Janusz Korczak, a Polish-Jewish physician who accompanied orphaned children to Treblinka.
Nationality of Author: French
Original Language: French
Publisher:
In Plays of the Holocaust: An International Anthology by Elinor Fuchs, editor, Theatre Communications Group, 1993
Experience(s) Chronicled: Concentration and Extermination Camps | Perpetrators, Bystanders and Collaborators
HTC Insights
Views, reference and research of interest.
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.
Many Questions and a Few Answers
by Robert Skloot 2022 NJTF HTII Lifetime Achievement Award AHO Winter Conference, Miami, FL I’d like to begin my remarks by asking the question that all of us have been asked often: “Why do you do the work you do?” There are, of course, many answers, but I’d imagine...