BUCHAREST, Romania – The latest premiere at the Jewish State Theatre in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, explores the horrors of the Holocaust and the memories of a survivor of the Auschwitz and Plaszow concentration camps.
Friday’s premiere of “The Beautiful Days of My Youth” through The Romanian Jewish Holocaust Survivor Ana Novac follows the commemorations of National Holocaust Remembrance Day on October 9, the day The deportations of Jews and Roma from Romania began in 1941.
Some 280,000 Jews and 11,000 Roma were deported and killed during Romania’s pro-Nazi regime in World War II. During the communist era, thousands of Romanian Jews emigrated to Israel. La current Jewish population is about 6,000, up from 800,000 before the war.
The work created online and in front of spectators who occupied less than a third of the seats due to measures aimed at curbing the coronavirus pandemic in this Eastern European country.
Maia Morgenstern, director of the Jewish State Theatre and Romanian Jewish actress known for her role in Mel Gibson’s 2004 film “The Passion of Christ,” described the staging of the work to The Associated Press as an “exclusively feminine project. “a woman, Liana Ceterchi.
“Each of us is a side of the soul and reminiscent of Anne Novac,” Morgenstern said.
The protagonist of the play, born Zimra Harsanyi, is originally from the Transylvania region of northern Romania. She was deported when she was 14. The newspaper he had in a Nazi concentration camp was first published in Hungary in 1966 and then translated into several languages. however, it was not published in his home country until 2004.
Many compare Novac’s paintings to those of Anne Frank, from “Diary of a Girl”, who documented her hidden life in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands before being deported to concentration camps.
“We bring scars from wounds that are not ours, yet we still have those scars,” said Morgenstern, who under pressure on the importance of evoking occasions through theatrical functionality “to perceive the ghosts of a painful past, the memories of horrible occasions that have passed. “divided the global into executioners and victims. “
Actresses wear striped uniforms from concentration camps in front of a background of photographs depicting entrances to fields, fuel chambers and empty bedrooms. Photographs and names of Holocaust victims are defended in a video about the level and artists. Human bones and a skull are supported through artists during monologues.
The pandemic severely affected the Romanian artistic community, causing theatres to close during lockdown. Subsequently, theatres were allowed to perform only outdoors and then indoors with a limited number of spectators.
“These are existential and also ethical issues. What can be done to protect life, not to be a risk and at the same time to continue our lifestyle and our activity and our prestige as artists?Morgenstern said.
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This story corrects the spelling of Ana Novac’s surname in the abstract and in the story. With AP Photos.
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Balazs back from Budapest, Hungary.
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