By Celeste Raspanti.
Product Code: N24000
Full-length Play
Drama
Cast size: 4m., 5w., extras.
This title can be licensed and sold throughout the World.
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In the monastery of Maria Morgenstern, life seems to go on quite predictably, even in 1943 Germany. But behind the convent walls there is an active underground working to hide and transport Jewish children through Germany to the border. One morning, Klaus, the monastery handyman, brings David and Miriam, two Jewish children. David is angry and threatens to return to the ghetto, insisting that he must return for his bar mitzvah and "stand like a man to say, I am a Jew." Mother Franziska arranges for the bar mitzvah in the face of threats from her sister, who is a Nazi sympathizer, and imminent searches by the local Gestapo commandant. At the very moment the commandant arrives to arrest her, David is finishing his bar mitzvah in the chapel and escapes to the border. This story in based on documentary evidence.
This is a beautiful script. I did it with my middle-school class and they learned so much from it, not only about acting but also about the history of the Holocaust.
A beautiful story of triumph over the horror that was Nazi Germany. A story of different religious beliefs standing on common ground and defusing the evil that was that time. A story of giving and respect.
Inform your students of that period in the 20th century, of Hitler, Germany and the Jewish/Catholic faiths. It is important for them to understand Mother Franziska's and David's needs.
Corrine Hammerschmidt, Maple River Schools, Mapleton, Minn.