Denial
The Workroom
Well, yes, some were. Despite the determination of Hitler and his henchmen, some Jews survived the sadistic slaughter. Some got out of harm’s way early on in Hitler’s reign; others were protected by sympathetic gentiles like Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg. And some who were deported to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen survived despite the astounding odds against them; their accounts are filled with tales of courage and cruelty, fate and chance–of being spared by their captors because they could play the violin or make electrical repairs, of being forced to assist in unspeakable atrocities against their fellow inmates in order to avoid the same fates, of stealing food and clothing from their dead and dying comrades, even of being sent to the gas chamber on a day when the machinery of death happened to stall. Some stayed alive because they were physically stronger than most, others because they were more ruthless–and many because they were determined to outlive their oppressors and tell what happened.
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The present-day efforts of “Holocaust revisionists” like Butz–whose book, its publisher boasts, “remains unsurpassed as the standard scholarly refutation of the Holocaust extermination story” and “the Six Million legend”–make Holocaust remembrance not merely an exercise in reminiscence but an urgently necessary campaign. A spate of productions on this theme has dominated this spring’s theater season, reaching a critical mass just in time for Yom Hashoah, the time of annual Holocaust remembrance. Following on the heels of Northlight’s The Glass House and The Last Survivor, Organic Touchstone’s Taking Sides, and Gilead’s Bent are three plays dealing with the legacy of Auschwitz and its ilk. Circle Theatre’s Auschwitz Lullaby tells of a Jewish doctor spared death because of his medical skills; Fourth Wall Productions’ The Workroom concerns a Jewish widow dealing with her husband’s death in the years following World War II; and Apple Tree Theatre’s Denial, set in the present, focuses on a Butz-like scholar who hires a Jewish lawyer to defend him on hate-crime charges. This theatrical trinity focuses not on death but on survival–and its cost to the survivors and the generations that have come after them.
Meanwhile Bernard, who’s prone to quoting the New Testament (“Bless them that persecute you”), declares that the “lie” of Holocaust survivors is the true “crime against humanity.” Initially delighted to meet and debate Noah, Bernard is soon sucked into a rabid rage against his esteemed foe, revealing the neurosis underlying his superrational facade; not a Nazi by ideology, Bernard is a classic fascist emotionally. And Noah–shrewd, diplomatic, but deeply committed to his cause–is driven by a sense of truth that only he fully comprehends. Though dedicated to exposing the evil of Nazism, he’s also burdened with a survivor’s guilt whose depths are greater than anyone realizes until the play’s confessional confrontation between him and another elderly concentration-camp survivor, played with crusty strength and self-deprecating humor by Nathan Davis.
John Sterchi and David Krajecki as Isaac and his coconspirator enact their roles with solid, understated conviction. (Krajecki also designed the low-key but effective set, which Elliot Wimbush has lit with atmospheric dimness to capture the prison’s claustrophobic horror.) But Christian Murphy as the SS officer and Janelle Snow as the capo play their roles with a semihysterical twitchiness that seems almost a parody of U.S. World War II propaganda films. Snow’s performance is particularly weird, like a cross between Gilda Radner and Peter Lorre with a dollop of Cloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein thrown in for good measure. By the time this bathetic play reaches its protracted climax–with the tearful teenager, played by Madeleine Mager, singing “Bei Mir Bist du Schoen” (the “lullaby” of the ironic title) as she awaits her execution–it has inadvertently trivialized the horrific events it means to commemorate.
Still, The Workroom merits attention as a truthful and timely account of the Holocaust’s aftermath–a simply stated, poignant reflection on a horror whose effects continue to ripple through our world more than 50 years after it occurred.
