Learning from the past ~ lessons for today - Holocaust Education ...

Holocaust Memorial Day 2009
The Holocaust as an inspiration for writing…
John MacKenna, playwright, author of Who By Fire
Aspects of history have a
way of becoming part of
our lives and, as a student
of history in college and
later as a teacher of
history, the Holocaust has
long been part of mine.
Once I became
acquainted with the
events behind the term ‘Holocaust’ it became a living,
breathing experience, which had little to do with dates and
everything to do with the human experience. It was never
going to be possible to turn away from the Holocaust; it was
never conceivable that it be treated simply as an event or a
series of events. It was always going to be a part of my life.
The writing of Who By Fire grew out of two things. First was
the desire to find a story among the millions of Holocaust
stories and, through its telling, to focus on a handful of lives.
Loss on a scale like that of the Holocaust is impossible to
relate effectively in theatre but individual loss finds an echo
in the human heart. Second was the fact that the songs of
Leonard Cohen – also long a part of my life – captured so
eloquently the human condition that they seemed an ideal
framework around which to build the play.
I was anxious when writing Who By Fire not to stray into the
area of propaganda. Propaganda destroys the empathy of
actors and audiences alike. We live for and by stories. We
learn from them and we relate to them. But, above all, we
look in those stories for the human connection, the face that
mirrors – to a greater or lesser extent – our own pain and loss.
In identifying individuals, even if they were fictional
creations, I hoped that the ghosts who peopled Who By Fire
would draw some small part of their experience from the
experiences of the millions who died in concentration
camps.
Meeting Holocaust survivor Zoltan Zinn-Collis, hearing his
story and having him talk for hours with the cast suddenly
brought a new dimension and depth of experience to the
whole production. Here was a man who had lived with
death, who had survived the annihilation of his family, who
could look back with the passion of one remembering
clearly. Here was a man with whom I had worked as a
student in summer employment without ever knowing his
story. Here was a man whose compassion and humour belied
everything he had suffered. Here was a figure of inspiration.
Above all, here was a man who was keeping alive the
memory of what humans are capable of doing to humans.
And that, I believe, is more essential now than ever. The
economy that has brought migrant workers from all over
the world is beginning to
stagger. The inevitable
consequence is the fingering
of the weak, the alienation
of minorities, the pushing of
those who are different ever
further to the margins. Now,
more than ever, we need to
remember and to avoid
even a hint of the dark
atrocities of the past.
Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings.
Heinrich Heine 1797–1856
Burning Books
Goebbels stood at a swastika-bedecked rostrum on the Unter den Linden, a wide, tree-lined street in Berlin, that ran past the
University and the State Opera House. He said: The age of extreme Jewish intellectualism has now ended. He threw a book into a fire.
It was like burning something alive, Lilian Mowrer said. Then students followed with whole armfuls of books, while schoolboys
screamed into the microphone their condemnation of this and that author, and as each name was mentioned the crowd booed and
hissed. Lion Feuchtwanger’s books, which had already been banned from stores, went into the flames as did books by Albert Einstein,
Thomas Mann, Brecht, Lenin, Marx, Engels, Zinoviev, Heine, Emil Ludwig, Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair and Jack London. Berthan von
Suttner’s pacifist novel “Lay Down Your Arms” was condemned as “un-German” and burned. “All Quiet on the Western Front” got
the most booing. Stefan Zweig’s books were nailed to a pillory as well as burned. It was May 10, 1933.
From Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilisation, Nicholson Baker (New York, 2008)
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