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...
What Survives is the Fire
Jenya Lidyhower: Bayla and Ethan’s grandmother; Hannah and Lev’s mother; wife to Philip; Polish Holocaust survivor; speaks with an eastern European accent; sharp-tongued, loyal, proud, witty, unwaveringly judgmental and tough on her family.
Philip Singer: Bayla and Ethan’s grandfather; Hannah and Lev’s father; husband to Jenya; Holocaust survivor; Polish, speaks with an eastern European accent, soft-spoken, sensitive, anxious, nurturing, dislikes talking about he survived the Holocaust.
Rose Wechsler: Bayla and Ethan’s grandmother; Seth and Ian’s mother; loving and loyal wife to Arthur; speaks with a light New York accent; stay-at-home mother; practical, selfish, cold; desperately wanted to have a daughter.
Arthur Reznick: Bayla and Ethan’s grandfather; Seth and Ian’s father; loving and loyal husband to Rose; fought in WW II and liberated Dachau; speaks with a light New York accent; has a cruel streak and a sardonic sense of humor; miserly.
Hannah Singer: Bayla and Ethan’s mother; daughter of Jenya and Philip; divorced from Seth and remarried; sensitive, anxious, effusive, nurturing, similar in character to her father; cannot talk about her parents’ experiences during the Holocaust.
Lev Singer: Brother to Hannah; son of Jenya and Philip; speaks with a light New York accent; religious, proud, volatile, straight; similar in character to his mother, Jenya.
Seth Reznick: Bayla and Ethan’s father; son of Rose and Arthur; divorced from Hannah; spontaneous, creative, mendacious, narcissistic, miserly like his father; when not working, spends all of his time fishing on his boat.
Bayla Reznick: Married to Matthew; daughter of Hannah and Seth; sister to Ethan; granddaughter of Jenya, Philip, Rose, and Arthur; niece of Lev; neurotic, empathetic, bookish, consumed with understanding her family’s past.
Ethan Reznick: Son of Hannah and Seth; brother to Bayla; grandson of Jenya, Philip, Rose, and Arthur; nephew of Lev; gambling addict; fights constantly with family members yet fiercely loyal; passionate, intelligent, gay.
Matthew Kaplan: Married to Bayla; wise, patient, steadfast, doting.
Date of authorship: 7/2017
Snapshot
Boomerang Theater, NYC, First Flight Festival, Reading, 12/15/18
Individual poems from the play have been published in various literary journals.
Barbara Schwartz
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.