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...
The Treasure
Author(s): Arthur Englaender
Three children and the clown Kašpárek/Kasperle travel to Africa in search of a treasure, live with an Arabic-speaking tribe in the village of Aljanin, and return to Europe with a discovery that saves even the poorest from hunger: the potato. Due to the portrayals of the African characters the script would need extensive adaptation to be performed today. Although the notion of finding a new source of food was clearly relevant to the prisoners’ situation in the ghetto, The Treasure has few other connections with the world of Terezín/Theresienstadt. Perhaps it served what one survivor called the most important function of theater for children: “We needed to divert them. So that they would simply forget about everything around them. Because when a person simply fixated on what was happening in front of him, he forgot about all the rest.”
Format: Play for children
Cast Size:9M/4F plus extras
Notes:
Support materials available in Performing Captivity, Performing Escape: Cabarets and Plays from the Terezín/Theresienstadt Ghetto, ed. Lisa Peschel, Seagull Books 2014.
Snapshot
Nationality of Author: Czechoslovakian
Original Language: German
Publisher:
Published in Performing Captivity, Performing Escape: Cabarets and Plays from the Terezín/Theresienstadt Ghetto, ed. Lisa Peschel, Seagull Books 2014.
Production Rights Holder:
Contact lisa_peschel@yahoo.com
Experience(s) Chronicled: The Ghettos
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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.