Holocaust Remembrance Day: What’s in a name?

AACI stages a tribute to the Righteous Gentiles who saved Jewish lives in Nazi-controlled France.

By BARRY DAVIS
Charles B. Davies with 11-year-old Yasmin Berg in ‘Remember My Name.’ (photo credit: RAPHAEL POCH)
Charles B. Davies with 11-year-old Yasmin Berg in ‘Remember My Name.’
(photo credit: RAPHAEL POCH)
There will be a Holocaust Remembrance Day event with a difference at the AACI next week. The program starts, on Wednesday at 7 p.m., with an emotive ceremony that will include readings from Megilat Hashoah, a video presentation of stories by survivors and those who saved them, and the event organizers hope to bring one of the Holocaust survivors to Talpiot to proffer his or her testimony of how they were kept alive by a Righteous Gentile.
The ceremony will be followed by the centerpiece of the proceedings, a performance by the J-Town Playhouse company, of Joanna Halpert Kraus’s play Remember My Name, a story of survival in wartime France. The production is, as the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel’s blurb explains, “a tribute to the Righteous Among Nations.”
That doesn’t sound like your run-of-the-mill Holocaust Remembrance Day fare. Canadian-born Jerusalemite director Raphael Poch goes along with the left-field take on the lineup. “I have always been looking for a little bit of a different way to celebrate Yom Hashoah,” says Poch, who directs the play along with Dena Buckman.
Celebrate sounds like a strange term to use in the context. “A lot of people memorialize, mark or remember the day, but I think it is a sort of celebration as well.” Despite the obvious grief at the loss of six million members of the Jewish people, Poch would like us to take something uplifting with us from the day, and from the play he is laying on. “I am not into the whole heavy Shoah, everyone dies, I guess, culture. There are things we can learn from the Shoah, there are things we can take with us. Those are the messages, the positive messages, I would like to get across on Yom Hashoah, both for myself and for other people.”
Remember My Name certainly fits the alternative-take bill. This prize-winning drama tells of a young girl’s survival in wartime France and the courage of those who protect her from the Nazis. Separated from her parents, her heritage and her name, the young Jewish girl matures from a sheltered child to a determined adolescent who fights for her country and her life. She is befriended by a priest, a widow, and a teacher who becomes a member of the French underground resistance. A Nazi lieutenant harasses and nearly catches the girl and her brave protectors.
Inspired by historical accounts, Remember My Name is a touching and heartfelt look at some of the brave heroes, both Jewish and non- Jewish, during the Second World War, heroes who found their own unique way to fight back, and to say “no” in the face of overpowering evil and, throughout everything, retained their own humanity and identity.
Poch’s first venture into unconventional Holocaust Remembrance Day artistic endeavor took place several years ago, when he directed a highly successful production of The Accomplices play by New York Times reporter Bernard Weinraub. The work is based on the work of Hillel Kook, who helped to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of European Jews. “The policy of the Jewish leadership in America back in the Thirties and Forties was ‘don’t rock the boat, because then they’ll start here too,’” says Poch. “They were trying not to stir things up, and then Hillel Kook came along and stirred things up and saved 200,000 Jews in Hungary. The Accomplices was a great success, and we sold out entirely for the whole week of Yom Hashoah.”
The message was duly taken on board. “People were looking for something positive, for something to do,” Poch recalls. “I have seen something of a trend, in the last six or seven years, in the cultural scene in Israel. People go to the community centers, and to the same kind of Yom Hashoah ceremonies – they light a candle and read some poetry, have a survivor speak and sing ‘Hatikva,’ and that’s it. I felt that if you do the same thing every year it begins to get a little flat.
People get a little jaded.”
Wednesday’s program at the AACI certainly steers clear of the mundane. While the Righteous Gentiles are respectfully given some of their due at Yad Vashem, it is pretty fair to say that most visitors to the Holocaust memorial go there for the Jewish-oriented content.
This is not the first time the AACI has hosted a Holocaust-themed J-Town Playhouse theater production. “Last year we did Kindertransport [by Diane Samuels], which was a great success,” says Poch.
That prompted this year’s venture. “One of the things I really like about this play is that there is interplay between the generations, which is the beautiful thing. The characters talk to each other crossgenerationally, from the mother who sent her child away, and then you have the daughter who grows up and talks to her daughter, and to the woman who saved her, and you have these characters going back and forth across the scenes.”
Although Remember My Name is not, strictly speaking, a true story, the end product is culled from snippets of Holocaust experiences. The 10-person cast is led by 11-year-old Yasmin Berg, who plays the girl – between the ages of 10 and 12 – who is sent away by her parents to a village where her father hopes and believes she will be protected by the locals.
Amazingly, this is Berg’s first acting role and, by all accounts, she is quite a star. “She is so talented,” says Pascal Carlier, a Belgian-born Jerusalemite who is also in the cast. “She is the real star.”
Star or not, it must be quite a challenge for young Berg to take on such a demanding role, and to identify with a girl of her own age living in a very different time, and in such alien and trying circumstances.
“It is a bit difficult to imagine life in the Holocaust,” says the 11-yearold, “but I think I can do that.” Could the youngster really imagine being sent away by her parents to a strange place? “I don’t think so,” she admits. “That would be a very difficult thing.”
Berg says her role in the play has not yet prompted her to read up more about the Holocaust, but says she expects to learn more about it on the first evening, prior to the performance. “We are going to be seeing a movie about Holocaust survivors,” she says. The film slot in question features interviews with survivors and saviors together by Nicole and Barak Bard, whose resumé includes a moving documentary about the Jewish resistance in France.
All told, there are eight performances of Remember My Name lined up at the AACI, with further shows taking place on April 16, 19, 27, 28 and 29, and May 5 and 7, all starting at 8 p.m.
For tickets and more information: 566-1181 or email to israeltheatersource@gmail.com.