Tags: Hungary

Hannah

A piece of dramatic documentary theatre, crafted around the historically accurate events in the life of Hannah Senesh, a paratrooper during World War II, who volunteered for a mission with the British armed forces to evacuate Jewish citizens out of her native Hungary.

Hannah Senesh

Hannah Senesh is a one-woman piece with music that recounts the true story of this heroic Hungarian-Jewish girl. Hannah Senesh was a young Jew, an ardent Zionist, who left her native Hungary on the eve of World War II and settled in Palestine. She parachuted several years later, with 31 other Palestinians, into Yugoslavia, tried to enter Hungary to help Jews escape the Nazis, was caught by the Germans, and executed at the age of 22. Despite terrible torture, she refused to betray others. Her death and her life have served as inspiration for later generations.

Hannah’s Road [דרכה של חנה]

A retelling of the heroism of Hannah Senesh, who escaped to Palestine from Nazi Europe, then parachuted into Yugoslavia to try to rescue Hungarian Jews, but was captured and executed by the Nazis at the age of 23.

Joel Brand

A docudrama that dramatizes the failed attempt to save the lives of Hungarian Jews. Joel Brand is a Hungarian leader whom Adolf Eichmann allows to negotiate with the British for transport trucks in exchange for the endangered Jews. Brand, instead is arrested by the British in Syria and when the negotiations fail, the Hungarian Jews are sent to their deaths.

Talking with Angels: Budapest, 1943

Talking with Angels: Budapest, 1943 is based on the true story of four close-knit friends and their encounter with transcendent forces. Over a period of 17 months, despite the chaos in Nazi-occupied Hungary, Gitta Mallasz, Lili Strauss, Joseph Kreutzer, and Hanna Dallos held weekly meetings every Friday afternoon. During these meetings, Hanna received channeled messages from four entities—four distinctly different personalities—who spoke through her and gave counsel and comfort to the quartet. In 1976, Gitta Mallasz, the only survivor of the group, turned the transcripts from these meetings into the book Talking with Angels, which Shelley Mitchell then adapted into this critically acclaimed solo performance.

The Spark, Hannah Senesh

Along with composer Sandy Shanin, has written this about (Senesh), a play that emphasizes her heroism as a parachutist from British Mandate Palestine to Hungary. The play was a semi-finalist of the Eugene O’Neill Musical Theater Conference in 2009. It was selected for the Monday Night Reading Series of Theatre Building Chicago, as well as for the Pacific Palisades, CA Playwrights Festival in 2010.