Lebenstraum - Not Just A Play

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
March 3, 2000

Last Sunday afternoon Ruby, Tzeira, and I went to the Firehouse Theatre on Broad Street to attend its production of"Lebenstraum." It was a most excellent presentation, with only three actors, two men and one woman, exchanging roles constantly, but we, the audience, never losing track of whom they were. The intensity of the play was riveting. You never looked at your watch, despite its one and a half-hour length. It is playing this weekend, and I am told that it has added another date. I most highly commend it to you.

Even one with a superficial acquaintance with twentieth century world history will recognize the title of the play,Lebenstraum, as the name of the fraudulent political rhetoric of the Nazis that justified their geographic annexation and expansion of Germany. Germans needed "Living space - Lebenstraum." Being superior to all other races, they were justified in subjugating and even exterminating Jews, Slavs, and gypsies, among others.

The proposition of the play is the following: A man is elected Chancellor of contemporary Germany. He is tormented by nightmares of the Holocaust and invites six million Jews to return to live in Germany. [What I will say will not detract from your viewing pleasure.] The questions raised by the play are viewed from several different vantage points: An American family, Jewish father, non-Jewish mother and their son influenced by his grandfather; their cousins in Israel; two Holocaust survivors who emigrated to Australia; and two German families. There is no way to diagram the interaction between these components except to say that the author, Israel Horowitz, was brilliant. The tension, emotion, angst, and anger were so palpable that it was touchable.

I share so of my reactions to the play, which raised many questions and issues.

• Why would anybody want to go back to Germany? In a short sermon I cannot deal with the character depth of the two Holocaust survivors, but even for them, especially for them, how? Why? When I visit parts of Brooklyn where I grew up I have such vivid memories, and those were pleasant times. How could anyone go to Berlin and not hear in their mind the roaring rallies, the shattering of glass, the black boots high stepping, and the unforgettable voice of Adolph Hitler? I would hear echoes on every corner. With the ability to live anywhere in the world, with the open doors of Medinat Yisrael, can there be any logical argument raised for a Jew to specifically choose to live in Germany? I can understand the Russian Jews caught in transit in Germany in the seventies and eighties. They had few options in getting out of the USSR. Maybe the Holocaust survivors wanted to confront their past, but the American family? In viewing our long history since the destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE, and especially after the disastrous Bar Kochba rebellion in 132 CE, I wished that they then had listened to those who advocated not rebelling. We would never have been exiled. Our path would not have taken us to the ultimately inhospitable countries of Spain, Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungry, and Russia. While we can be proud of our accomplishments in each country, it ultimately enabled our powerlessness and our demise. If we didn't need to be there in the first instance, why go back? The play raises a provocative question. 

• Does economic competition require that people shirk their humanity? Does the "dog-eat-dog world" require the "losers" to become racists and hate the "winners?" This question exists just like it is, unconnected to any other issues. But it is certainly sharper in the context of Germany, where Hitler blamed the Jews for their economic collapse and suffering. It added fuel to the fire. I could rephrase the question differently:Can the German, can anybody not blame the Jews for their own problems and leave us alone? When Austria included Haider's party in the government and Israel was the first to withdraw its ambassador because of his esteem of and distortion of Nazi history, we get blamed for inciting the world. In this play, when returning Jews receive jobs which someone else would have gotten if they weren't there, all the old hatred and vituperativeness, the xenophobia and violent contemptuousness rise as if it were only yesterday. The play directly asks the question: Has Germany changed? Has humanity changed?

• Deftly the play included the issue, which is now playing out in an English courtroom. The Holocaust is a lie. We continue to raise it as a way of getting something. In the play it is jobs and benefits. In other places it is financial restitution. In other places it is our possessions, namely, art. Deborah Lipstadt who lectured here at U of R concerning Holocaust deniers is being sued by David Irving whom she mentions by name in her book, for having harmed his reputation and caused him many different losses. English rules of jurisprudence place the burden of proof on her and not on him. For this reason Israel rushed into print memoirs written in his own hand by Adolph Eichmann the man responsible for implementing the Final Solution. The play asks: When will they ever learn? How can you deny a historical event with the ashes still before you? When movies can place Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump in the middle of real television footage, how can anyone know what is historically true? How does anyone believe that what you hear or is taught is true? Is real? The play echoes old canards: "it never happened. It's a Jewish lie. It's a Jewish invention." My reaction is: How can they say that? But they do. While for us the Holocaust is a central event, will it only become a footnote, at best, for the rest of the world? Has our repetition engrained it into our children, or made them skeptical or even jaundiced?

• The play touched upon the church by having it come out against the proposal, even as they "were not against the Jews." The role of the church is in dispute particularly as the Vatican continues to refuse to open itscomplete archives from the war years. They refuse to allow the answer to the questions: who knew what and when? Why was the church silent? What was the relationship between the Vatican and Berlin? What did the cardinals, bishops, and local priests think was happening when the Jews were disappearing from their parishes? Did they care? Did they see our death as their theological triumph, and thus would certainly do nothing? I am more than suspect about Arafat's kiss of the pontiff's hand. Why is it wrong for people of all faiths to have total access to their religious places, including the Jews, when Israel, i.e., the Jews, are the ones in control? While the play stays within character and scope, its text leads directly to these questions which are only going to escalate this month with the Pope's visit to Israel and Jordan, and in the later months, when negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians resumes.

• Lastly, the play opens with the German chancellor asking the Jews: "Please come home." The play doesn't explore this question, just makes an assumption. But I have to articulate the question: Was Germany everhome? An even more difficult question: What is home for the Jew? Is there any one home? Is Israel home? What does it mean to "be at home" vis-à-vis the larger culture? What do we preserve? What do we give up? What enables the feeling of group identity to be passed from one generation to the next in a meaningful way?

The play raises many more questions than I can even raise, never mind, address. I would conclude these observations by saying noting that Elie Wiesel answered the question: "Why did he wait so long to write" by saying that he was too close to events. We, Germany, Israel, are too close to the Holocaust to have good, satisfying answers to every question raised by the very existence of Nazi Germany and its perpetration of the Holocaust. It took the Rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash a long time to come to grips with the destruction of the Temple and expulsion from the country. I dare say that it will require more distance in time. But events will not afford us the luxury of confronting and answering the other questions raised by the play. I commend it to your viewing.