Table of Contents Introduction to the Fourth Edition ............................................................................... 4 By Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, Founder and Director, Remember the Women Institute 1. Annotated Bibliographies ....................................................................................... 15 1.1. Plays about Women during the Holocaust ......................................................... 15 1.2. Plays about the Holocaust Written by Women ................................................... 68 1.3 Books about Women, Theater, and the Holocaust ............................................ 120 2. Personal Essays about Creating and Staging Plays .......................................... 123 2.1 Directing Performances of Germaine Tillion’s In The Underworld ..................... 123 A Personal Essay by Dr. Meghan Brodie, Assistant Professor of Theater, Ursinus College 2.2 The Woman Who Said “No”: Writing a Play about Anti-Nazi Resisters ............. 126 A Personal Essay by Cynthia L. Cooper, Playwright, journalist and author in New York 2.3 Writing a Play Based on Charlotte Delbo’s Auschwitz and After ....................... 129 A Personal Essay by Dr. Patrick Henry, Cushing Eells Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Literature, Whitman College 2.4 Bringing Courage Untold to the Stage .............................................................. 133 A Personal Essay by Susan B. Katz, Dayspring Counseling Services, Exton, PA 2.5 Remembering Nava Semel ............................................................................... 137 A Personal Essay by Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel 2.6 Bringing Refidim Junction to the Stage ............................................................. 140 A Personal Essay by Dr. Alice Shalvi, Israel Prize Laureate 3. Examining Women in the Holocaust through Theater ....................................... 144 A Study Guide by Karen Shulman, Educational Consultant, Remember the Women Institute 3 Introduction to the Fourth Edition By Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel Founder and Director, Remember the Women Institute This is the 2019 fourth edition of Remember the Women Institute’s Women, Theater, and the Holocaust Resource Handbook, created as a service to educators, students, and others who want to know more about dramatizations by women, as well as those that feature women’s Holocaust experiences. We are dedicating this edition to the memory of Nava Semel, who brought Holocaust stories to life through her remarkable dramatizations, novels, and short stories. (See essay 2.5 about her, below.) The material here is connected to two larger projects: the Holocaust Theater Catalog of the National Jewish Theater Foundation, and a virtual Holocaust Theatre Online Collection (currently only in Hebrew) for All About Jewish Theatre. We are pleased to be part of both of these projects, the former based in the United States and the latter, in Israel. We launched the first edition of this resource handbook in April 2015, at a Yom HaShoah commemoration co-sponsored by Remember the Women Institute, American Jewish Historical Society, and All About Jewish Theatre, and held at the Center for Jewish History, New York. The event coincided with the Remembrance Readings Day of the National Jewish Theater Foundation, which encourages using theater to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. The 2015 program included three short dramatic presentations by professional actors and musicians: Gretel Bergmann, written and directed by Cynthia L. Cooper, performed by Stacey Linnartz; excerpts from In the Underworld, originally written in French by Germaine Tillion, 1944, in Ravensbrück, directed by Dr. Meghan Brodie, performed by actors Stacey Linnartz and Lynn N. Silver, and singer Lily Davis; and “Wild Wind Blows” from Silence Not, A Love Story by Cynthia L. Cooper, performed by Stacey Linnartz. Musical direction and accompaniment were by Jonathan Marro. The event closed with a panel discussion on women, theater, and the Holocaust with Rachel Lithgow, then Executive Director, American Jewish Historical Society; Dr. Meghan Brodie, then Assistant Professor of Theater, University of Southern Maine, Director, In the Underworld; Cynthia L. Cooper, playwright of Gretel Bergmann and Silence Not, A Love Story; Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, founder and Executive Director, Remember the Women Institute; and Dr. Sonja M. Hedgepeth, Professor, Holocaust 4 Studies, Women’s Studies, Language and Literature, Middle Tennessee State University. The second edition of the resource handbook was also released in conjunction with Remembrance Readings Day, on May 2, 2016, with a program of readings at the Center for Jewish History in New York, in cooperation with the American Jewish Historical Society. Like the 2015 event, the program reflected the goals of this resource handbook: providing information on and encouraging the production of plays and dramatic presentations about the Holocaust that are written by women and/or about the experiences of women during the Holocaust. The 2016 event included a play written by a survivor of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, an original contemporary short play, and a personal history set to music. Excerpts of Charlotte Delbo’s classic play, Who Will Carry the Word? were performed by Angela Bey, Mya Flood, Indira Joell, and Allison Rohr— Dr. Meghan Brodie‘s students in the Ursinus College Department of Theater and Dance, directed by Dr. Brodie. The Spoken and the Unspoken, the premiere of a short play written by Cynthia L. Cooper especially for this occasion, focused on researching and uncovering stories of sexual violence. The play, based on the work of Remember the Women Institute and the resistance we have faced in bringing this subject into the open, featured two professional actors, Stacey Linnartz and Jessica Litwak. Cantor Shira Ginsburg performed excerpts from her acclaimed Bubby’s Kitchen, a musical reminiscence of growing up with grandparents who were heroes of the resistance in Belarus. Following the performances, there was a panel discussion with Dr. Saidel, Dr. Brodie, playwright Cooper, Cantor Ginsburg, and Arnold Mittelman, President of National Jewish Theater Foundation. The third 2017 edition was again launched at a program at the Center for Jewish History, on April 26, 2017, in cooperation with the American Jewish Historical Society. The readings focused on women and resistance and included: We Will Not Be Silent, an excerpt from a play about Sophie Scholl, a leader of the White Rose resistance group, written by David Meyers, directed by Aliza Shane, and performed by Cait Johnston and Nick Giedris; At the Train Station in Munich by Cynthia L. Cooper, directed by Ludovica Villar-Hauser and performed by Sarah Baskin and Abby Royle; In Her Words: Stories of Survival and Resistance by Virginia D’Albert-Lake, Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz, Gemma La Guardia Gluck, and Isabella Leitner, adapted and directed by Dr. Meghan Brodie and performed by her Ursinus College students, Mya Flood, Indira Joell, Maddie Kuklentz, and Allison Rohr; and Terezín Cabaret: Ilse Weber’s Letters and Songs, performed by Jenny Lee Mitchell and accompanied by Maria Dessena, Untitled Theater Company #61 and Mad Jenny Theater. In 2018 Remember the Women Institute’s program on Women, Theater and the Holocaust was created in connection with our international group art exhibition, VIOLATED! Women in Holocaust and Genocide, at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in 5 SoHo, New York City. Held at the gallery on April 15, 2018, the program focused on sexual violence. Plays and readings included: The Spoken and the Unspoken, a play written by Cynthia L. Cooper, featuring professional actors Stacey Linnartz and Claudia Schneider, and dramatizing Remember the Women Institute’s work about sexual violence during the Holocaust; excerpts and songs from In the Underworld, written by Germaine Tillion in Ravensbrück women's concentration camp, performed and sung by Charlotte Torres, Angela Bey, Mya Flood, Indira Joell, and Bella Ragomo, students of Dr. Meghan Brodie, Ursinus College, with an introduction by Dr. Brodie; and the premiere of A Congolese Refugee Lives to Survive, performed by Abigail Ramsay and written by Cynthia L. Cooper, adapted (with permission) from an interview conducted by HIAS in South Africa. A panel discussion about art and theater followed. There was also an opportunity to view the exhibition. The presentation was again part of the National Jewish Theater Foundation/Holocaust Theater International Initiative Remembrance Readings. This fourth edition of the resource handbook was launched on May 23, 2019, at a program of dramatic readings about Women, Theater, and the Holocaust, held at and co-sponsored by Congregation Ansche Chesed in New York City. As this edition went to press before the program, information is incomplete. Dr. Meghan Brodie, Assistant Professor of Theater at Ursinus College, directed a scene from Claude & Marcel, her play-in-progress about Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob) and Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe), lesbian surrealist artists who engaged in resistance work on the Channel Island of Jersey during the Nazi occupation. The scene was performed by New York City artists Madelyn James and Clare McKelway. Cynthia L. Cooper presented her new short play, The Box. The theme is that some people stepped forward to save Jewish families during the Holocaust. They are called “The Righteous” at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel. However, not everything went right for them in the aftermath.