Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Holocaust in Lithuania

The June 22, 2021, edition of the European Jewish Congress email newsletter carried this video with the headline “80th Anniversary of the Beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania.” (You can subscribe for free to this bi-weekly newsletter with “the latest statements and news from the European Jewish communities” at https://eurojewcong.org)

Watching this video today, I again considered the impetus for my current free nonfiction Holocaust theater project www.ThinEdgeOfTheWedge.com — www.SchritteInDenAbgrund.com in German.

That impetus? To preserve among other firsthand accounts of Holocaust survivors and saviors the account of Judith, whose mother had the prescience when the Nazis broke the non-aggression pact with the Soviets on June 21-22, 1941, to rescue her daughter from what turned out to be certain death.

Here is the beginning of the THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE nonfiction play that recounts this first of many miracles that enables Judith to survive the Holocaust although her mother is gassed at Stutthof.

RADIO ANNOUNCER
September 1, 1939. The German Army has attacked Poland.

Lights down on Radio Announcer.

Lights up on JUDITH. She speaks in Yiddish-accented English.

JUDITH
I am Judith and I am eight years old, the youngest of three children, when the Russians occupy my hometown in Lithuania at the start of World War II in 1939. My father had died in 1938. He did not live to see the Nazis invade western Poland, followed by the Russians occupying eastern Poland.

She looks off to one side as if fearful she will be overheard.

Judith picks up a small cloth bag at her feet.

JUDITH
The Russians send a whole school class away for two weeks in the summer to help us learn to become good Communists. I am away at this camp when the Nazis march into Lithuania in June of 1941. The non-Jewish children are informed that no harm will come to them. We Jewish children are immediately separated from our non-Jewish friends.

She puts down the cloth bag as the lights on stage dim.

JUDITH
One evening, a counselor wakes me to find a strange man standing above me and holding out a letter in Yiddish from my mother.

Judith holds out her hand to accept an imaginary letter. She reads it aloud.

JUDITH
“Dearest Tochter: I have given this man my diamond ring in exchange for bringing you home. You must obey him completely.”

Judith climbs into an imaginary sack.

JUDITH
He puts me into an empty sack and fills it with hay and potatoes. He warns me that making a sound could cost my life as well as his. Then he drives his horse and wagon all night. Every time the wagon stops, I feel that this is the last breath I will ever take. When we arrive at his house, he ties me up in the basement to ensure I will not run away.

She rises from the floor,

JUDITH
When we finally reach my home, my mother hugs me and breaks out crying.

Judith is overcome with emotion. Then she looks straight at the audience.

JUDITH
Later we hear that all the Jewish children who have been at Russian summer camp with me have been shot by the Nazis.

Lights down on Judith.