Tags: murder

Andorra

Andri has been told by his father, the town's teacher, that he is an adopted Jewish child saved from neighboring anti-Semites. However, unbeknownst to him, he is an illegitimate child of the teacher. At the start of the drama, Andri is engaged to the teacher's daughter, in reality his half sister. While the teacher tries to prevent their wedding, Andri becomes attacked by ant-Semites in his own community and invaders from the neighboring country. To try and save his son, the teacher reveals the truth but the town does not believe him and Andri is killed for being a Jew. Representatives of the town (none of whom are given names but, instead, titles signifying their occupations, except for the priest, rationalize their betrayal of the young man.

Margin for Error

In a mystery melodrama, a Jewish New York police officer, Moe Finkelstein, is, after protesting, convinced to serve as a bodyguard for a German government official. The detective discovers that the official is in trouble for misusing funds intended for spying on the US. Another German conspirator plots to kill the disgraced Nazi and blame the Jewish officer. When the conspirator is killed, the New York policeman investigates, discovers the real cause of death, and assists in preventing sabotage.

Our Class

Our Class follows the lives of 10 school children—Catholic and Jewish—growing up in a small town in Poland. Beginning in 1925, the children are full of friendship and hope for the future. But when World War II breaks out, Soviets, then Nazis, invade the town and everything changes. Anti-Semitism creates a divide and leads to persecution and violence, culminating in a mass murder where the Jewish inhabitants are burned in a barn or murdered in the town square. The play questions how ordinary people, once friends, could commit such horrific acts.

Room for Doubt

A highly respected Professor of German Literature at a prominent American university is confronted by his past, which conceals a terrifying secret he has hidden for decades. Accused of murder as a Nazi official in the Warsaw Ghetto by the son of one of his victims, he is forced to reveal a secret that would change his life, his son’s, and, most of all, his accusers.

The Attic Room

A dream play about Adam Czerniaków, a real historical figure and chair of the Jewish Council in the Warsaw ghetto from 1939 through 1942, who was called on to designate Jewish children for deportation from the ghetto, which he knew meant their deaths. He commits suicide with the fictional character Rachael Wyze, a present day Israeli journalist, who, while serving in the army, witnesses the needless murder of a Palestinian girl by an Israeli sergeant. When called on to testify, she has to choose between the truth, which means injuring Israel, or lying, which she believes would injure Judaism. In her bitter confrontation with Adam over what she terms his failed leadership during the time of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, she admits she also committed suicide when she could not decide to decide.

The Child Dreams [הילד חולם]

A play in four parts. The life of a sleeping boy is disrupted when his home is invaded and his father is brutally murdered. He and his mother become fleeing refugees. In the final scene of the drama, the boy arrives in the land of dead children. While the play is not specifically set during the Holocaust, its imagery is clearly connected to its horrors.

Viehjud Levi

The issue of continuing guilt following the war in Germany is examined in this play, which is structured almost as a mystery. Hirsch Levi, a successful German-Jewish businessman who deals in livestock, is murdered in the early years of the Nazi regime. No one has ever been punished for his murder nor has anyone been identified as the killer in a town where the population wishes not to be reminded of this early horrific act of anti-Semitism.