Based in part on The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, TEREZIN tells the story of two Jewish girls – Alexi, a brilliant violin player, and her friend Violet – locked in desperate struggle for survival after arriving at Terezin. After Violet mysteriously disappears, Alexi’s only hope to find her is with the aid of a Nazi commander offering her a Faustian bargain – teach him to play the violin and he will reveal Violet’s whereabouts. But could you really trust the very man who ordered the deportation and extermination of her own people?

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Some stories are forgotten and never told. Others are misremembered. Then still, there are stories we remember but don’t understand — and these are ripe for the creative imagination. Terezin, a play conceived and rendered by the passions of writer/director Nicholas Tolkien, is such a story. The Terezin concentration camp in the former Czechoslovakia is the notorious site of the “model Jewish settlement,” where the Nazis created mock-living conditions to deceive the outside world. The story is told at every Sunday school and on Yom HaShoah. Tolkien’s play similarly aims to honor its place in history and honor the victims of the tragedy, as well as examine the lives of the people that endured such psychological and physical brutality. Terezin, at its core, is a memorial, a call to remember. I appreciate a work of art that insists we fulfill an ethical responsibility, though the performance unsurprisingly is difficult and heavy. The other spectators seemed to feel that as well. I saw three older couples sitting near me leave the theater when the Holocaust history became too severe. But the play is clearly meant to be brutal. It focuses on abductions, on separations, on loss. Tolkien’ …Read more