Darkness We Carry

Introduction

Introduction zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVU 1zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA HE following is an unpublished play consisting of a single scene, if such a simple piece of dialogue and description can be called a play. It was sent to me by a Polish friend, an elderly professor and survivor of the Bialystok Ghetto and the concentration camps, whom I met in Warsaw in 1978. Learning of my interest in the drama of the Holocaust, he told me of the death of his wife and two little daughters during those terrible years. Some months later I received this letter from him. Warsaw, 25 I 1979 Dear Professor Skloot, I thank you for your remembering my little [granddaughter] Ruth and for sending her the little white shirt to her 1st anniversary of her birthday. The little one is an amiable sunny creature. When—b'ezrat Hashem [with God's help]—grown up she will be told about her friends in the distant Madison, Wise, and she will thank for herself. I would like to reciprocate for your being so kind. A propos the Holocaust studied by you. Ill try to give you if no some inspiration so some idea. (Introduction ): Bialystok-Ghetto, winter (January) 1943, before an "action ," feverish preparation to save the life, dug outs, hidings and . . . buying drugs for the little ones, they must sleep when the gang will enter and seek victims for Treblinka, they shall not wake up and cry and so betray the hiding . . . Soon, as usually, on the market appeared falsified drugs without any value . . . (Act IV): Father: Seller: F: S: F: S: F: Have you the stuff? Well . . . Don't be afraid. I know you have it. But I must be sure. Is it real? Will it work? It will. It's excellent. I hope so. Pain? No pain. Will sleep? XI Xlt Introduction zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVU S: Like a young angel. F: I don't care about angels. It is for my beloved son, my only one . . . It remains only to write the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th act and only to begin and finish the 4th one. Think it over for yourself or together with your students. Not every word of the above is true but the story is true. I can add for the use of the playwriter: The boy then escaped, but a 4 year old sunny girl, Baziunia, did not. She awoke when the Germans entered the room and she began to cry. One professor of mathematics, a decent man, put his hand on her neck, certainly he wished not to kill her. I buried the little blond angel in the garden under the room where was hiding. The mother of the little angel stretched through the window to me her tiny body. I remember her last words. Look, maybe she is still alive. But she wasn't. It was a moony mild winter night, but the soil was hard, it was difficult to dig a grave. I wish you all the best P.S. Excuse me the story and my English The Darkness We Carry is a belated response to this friend's letter. For more than ten years, much of my professional and personal life has been occupied with the study of the Holocaust. Most people whose "lives" coincide so auspiciously would be counted fortunate and, to a degree, I am. But it would be incorrect to say that mine is happy work, for the subject under scrutiny often places me at the mercy of the grimmest of materials. My family lost no one in the Holocaust, but the horrible events created a demand on my attention impossible to resist. I am sure this involvement is due largely to my Jewishness, although I recognize that many Jews remain rather unconcerned with the Holocaust, and others, at the woeful other extreme, have made it an obsession resulting in excessively narrow self-definition. Certainly, I am drawn to reflect on the Holocaust for the ethical, cultural, and aesthetic problems it encompasses, although I am mindful also of the theological or political issues it subsumes under its insatiable shadow. In this book, whose title comes from the essay "A Kind of Survivor" by George Steiner, I have tried to further explore my thoughts about and responses to the Holocaust and to Holocaust drama that I described initially in the introduction to The Theatre of the Holocaust (1982). The twenty-five plays discussed in the following chapters appeared over a period of thirty years. The attitudes they reflect cover a [18...