The Antecedents of American Holocaust Drama and the Transformation of Werfel's Jacobowsky and the Colonel

The Antecedents of American Holocaust Drama and the Transformation of Werfel's Jacobowsky and the Colonel EDWARD ISSER The Holocaust is an ineffable occurrence that defies the capabilities of the human imagination. Dramatic representations ofthe historical catastrophe must transform, or as Adorno has said, transfigure; the terror so that it can be endured by an audience. In the American theater this is usually accomplished by the imposition of melodramatic modes upon the historical model. Sententious messages, moral exemplars, uplifting endings, and heroic sacrifices are used to bring order out of the chaos; to make the unimaginable approachable and the unbearable manageable. Lawrence Langer refers to this as the Americanization of the Holocaust, and asserts that such representations "perrnitthe imagination to cope with the idea of the Holocaust without forcing a confrontation with its grim details. '" The process of ..Americanization" can be traced to the anti-fascist plays of the 1930S and early 1940s. These works, written by some of America's best known playwrights, bridged the cultural and spatial gap between American and European affairs. Most of these plays had nothing to do with Jews, but they nevertheless had a significant influence upon Holocaust dramatuIgy. The antifascist plays offered effective strategies for overcoming audience apathy and revulsion in representing the Nazi movement. Early anti-fascist dramas urged American involvement in European affairs at a time when public opinion was fmnly opposed to intervention. Nazism was represented as an amorphous evil physically and spiritually encroaching upon the West. The authors strove to create empathy for the victims and to agitate public opinion against the movement. According to Susan and Bernard Duffy, the purpose of anti-fascist drama was "to chronicle Nazi atrocities in order to shock the audience, instill in them a sense of outrage, and move them to action." 2 Examples ofanti-fascist drama include Richard Maibaum's Birthright (1933), Leslie Reade's The Shatter'd Lamp (1934), Elmer Rice's Judgement Day (1991) 34 MOOERN .ORAMA 513 EDWARD ISSER (1934), American Landscape (1938), and Flighllo Ihe Wesl (1940), Sinclair Lewis's II Can'l Happen Here (1936), S. N. Behrman's Rain From Heaven (1934), Clifford Odets's Tilllhe Day I Die (1935), George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's The American Way (1939), Clare Booth's Marginfor Error (1939), Maxwell Anderson's Candle in Ihe Wind (1941), Lillian Hellman's Watch on Ihe Rhine (1941) and The Searching Wind (1944), the 1941 revision of Robert Sherwood's There Shall Be No Nighl, John Steinbeck's The Moon is Down (1942), and Edward Chodorov's Decision (1944). In addition, several works by European authors opposed to the Nazis were presented in New York at this time: Friedrich Wolf's Professor Mamlock (1937), Ernst Toller's No More Peace (1937), and Franz Werfel's The Eternal Road (1937). Anti-fascist dramas employ a number of theatrical and literary devices to bridge the physical and emotional gap between an American audience and events in Europe. Most popular are the conventions of reflected emotional involvement, the imminent threat scenario, redemptive heroic sacrifice, and the familial melodramatic structure. Reflected emotional involvement occurs in works such as There Shall Be No Nighl, Walch on Ihe Rhine, Flighl to Ihe West, and Candle in Ihe Wind. In these plays the protagonists, threatened by the Nazis, are romantically linked to American women. The women, without exception, are white, Protestant, and from proper homes in New England and Virginia. The women are presented as moral exemplars to the American people, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the men they love validates the righteousness of the anti-fascist cause. The imminent threat scenario occurs in II Can'I Happen Here, The AmericanLandscape, The American Way, and Flighl to the West. In these plays Nazism is presented as a clear and present danger to the United States. No longer can the plight of Europe be ignored, because the source of its misery, fascism, has arrived in America. In these plays the United States is threatened by Nazi takeovers and infiltrations, but in each play, an American comes forth willing to sacrifice himself to save the country from the Nazi threat. America's ambivalence towards Hitler, its phobic attitude...