Through the Darkness

Through the Darkness recounts the unimaginable journeys and true stories of four courageous men and women who left everything behind, including their loved ones, so that they might stay one step ahead of the Holocaust. They are composite characters that playwright Breindel built from interviews with Holocaust survivors. Three of the four characters managed to avoid the horrors of the concentration camps and remain free, even if freedom was no more than the right to die on their own terms. We meet these four characters as people in late middle age, living comfortably in America in the mid 1980s. The characters include a German Jew who emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1930s, was drafted and became a POW during the Battle of the Bulge; a Polish woman who could pass as Christian and spent the war on the run; a woman sent from the Lodz Ghetto to Auschwitz; and a daring son of a Polish peddler who fled to Russia and survived by working for the Soviets in Siberia and later, by joining the Polish Army. For most of them, chaos was inescapable, freedom was motion, and the only safe place was anyplace other than where they were. Each of the characters repeatedly comes face to face with seemingly insurmountable obstacles to daily survival, showing us that when life is vastly different, life is still livable.

Format: Full-length play

Cast Size:3M/2F

Running Time: 90 minutes

Original or Prominent Production:
The Workshop Theater, New York City, March 9 to April 1, 2017.

Original Source Material: Interviews with Holocaust survivors.

Original Language: English

Production Rights Holder:

Alan C. Breindel

Experience(s) Chronicled: Concentration and Extermination Camps | Hiding | Survivors and Subsequent Generations | Escape | The Ghettos | Women and the Holocaust