Chicana Ways - Aletta

AnyBody's Concerns 6 (2003)
in justification of war, "well, of course if we hadn't fought
Nazism... that's an honest and just war; that shows that war
is worthwhile." Well you can say, "yes, but if it hadn't been
for the first World War, there wouldn't have been Nazism." So,
war caused that. So, you go back and back and back and it's
always war causing war.
Diane Samuels on links between her plays Kindertransport, The
True-Life Fiction of Mata Hari and Mrs Gorsky
There seem to be thematic connections between your plays, as
they all deal with motherhood, with a secret in the past that
haunts the present and with persecution. The latter features
associate the plays with the Gothic genre, creating suspense
and a somewhat gloomy atmosphere within the plays.
Would you like to tell us something more about this secret
that lies in the past and haunts the present? I mean you've
said that you don't think the Holocaust is the haunting secret
in Kindertransport.
It was never a secret in my life. It was always pretty much
out there to be honest. What is the big secret in Jewish
communities is the levels of sexual abuse that goes on. I've
not begun to really write about this, so... I don't know, is
the ultimate sexual abuse circumcision? I think it is a pretty
appalling thing to do. And it's a ritualised form of child
abuse that goes on in the Jewish community quite openly. I
think a very damaging and very difficult thing. And it is not
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