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...
Schum Schum
Author(s): Käthe Leichter
Leichter, a Social Democrat politician, labor organizer, and author living in Austria before the outbreak of WWII, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 for socialist activities. She was never released from imprisonment. Her anti-Nazi play is about two Jewish prisoners who escape to a deserted island and are shipwrecked. Leichter wrote the play while interned in Ravensbrück to offer the women there a form of emotional escape. A second version of the play, which praised the SS, was written as way to avoid punishment if found by the guards at Ravensbrück. The original version was destroyed. Leichter was gassed in 1942, two years after arriving at the camp.
Snapshot
Original or Prominent Production:
1940–1942, Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany.
1940–1942, Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany.
Nationality of Author: Austrian
Original Language:
Experience(s) Chronicled: Concentration and Extermination Camps | Resistance | Theater During Holocaust | Women and the Holocaust
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
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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.