It’s been 60 years since the Holocaust and in this futuristic fantasy play, the new German chancellor has decided that his country has had enough with the Jewish guilt. He wants to welcome back 6 million Jews – with homes, jobs and full citizenship! Israel Horovitz’s play Lebensraum recently read at the West Coast Jewish Theatre event held at the Venice United Methodist Church was an eye-opener.
‘Please come home,” the Chancellor begs the Jews of the world. Many in the country think it’s a good idea but a large percentage do not. Those objecting are the doc workers who are out of work and the clergy who supported the Nazis in the 30’s and 40’s. Even supposedly liberal professors at the German universities still believe in Hitler’s philosophy and are trampled down when they salute the late dictator. We learn to our horror that the student’s education glossed over the Nazi years. If they heard of the events and the Jewish mass murders, they’re led to believe it was only a select few who did these bad things. One boy says “What my father did was his problem, not mine.” Many of those who have parents who lived through those years continue to deny the gas chambers and camps actually happened and complain that the Jews took over everything then as they did now.
Several people apply for the Operation Jewish Homeland program – including a gay couple from France who are given problems when they try to return to Germany, an out of work doc worker with his more religious teenage son and his non-Jewish wife, and an old Auschwitz survivor who has vowed revenge on the woman downstairs who had turned his family in.
Charles Shapiro again does a wonderful job at narration. The actors – each who took numerous roles and did a fabulous job at the various accents and emotions despite this only being a reading – were Adam J. Smith, Warren Davis, and Annie Abrams. Howard Teichman, the artistic director of West Coast Jewish Theatre directed and produced the play reading.
As the story progressed, the anger grows to a boiling point. The doc worker’s son, of course, falls in love with the daughter of the angry German who looses his job to the American Jewish doc worker and the old man finds the woman who betrayed his family. I don’t want to spoil it in case you get to see it, but even with coincidences, playwright Horovitz did a masterful job in showing that Jew-hatred doesn’t change despite the times. It’s a terrifying idea that history might repeat itself and in some ways, it already has.
The play was directed by Howard Teichman and produced by Mr. Teichman and Bill Froggatt.
Special thanks for Senior Pastor Benedicta Ogbonnya for letting the West Coast Jewish Theatre perform there.
I highly suggest checking out the West Coast Jewish Theatre for their future plays and consider donating to the fund to keep them going.
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