THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE Excerpts Script

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller

CAST FOR THE EXCERPTS SCRIPT:

JUDITH — Lithuanian Jew — survivor wearing clothes appropriate to a Lithuanian of the early 1940s

POLISH COUNTESS — non-Jew savior wearing clothes appropriate to her high status in early 1940s Poland

RADIO ANNOUNCER or RADIO ANNOUNCERS

FIRST RADIO ANNOUNCER
Berlin, Germany, March 23, 1933: Today the government of Germany has granted Adolph Hitler the power to enact laws without the involvement of the German parliament. This dictator action is less than two months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and less than one month after the constitution of Germany was suspended and key civil liberties were abolished. In additional news, yesterday the first political prisoners arrived at the newly established concentration camp — Dachau.

SECOND RADIO ANNOUNCER
Berlin, Germany, May 10, 1933: At Bebelplatz in Berlin today Humboldt University students who are members of the Nazis’ German Student Association burned 20,000 books including those by Albert Einstein.

THIRD RADIO ANNOUNCER
Nuremberg, Germany, September 15, 1935: Today during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party two new laws were passed: The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor forbids marriages and extramarital sexual relations between Jews and Germans. The Reich Citizenship Law declares that only those of German or related blood are eligible to be German Reich citizens. The Jews are classed as state subjects without citizen rights.

FOURTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
Munich, Germany, September 30, 1938: Today the United Kingdom, France and Italy gave away the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in what is being called the Munich Agreement. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced “peace in our times.”

FIFTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
Berlin, Germany, November 10, 1938 Last night Nazi paramilitary forces and civilians throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland destroyed 267 synagogues, damaged or destroyed over 7,000 Jewish businesses, and imprisoned 30,000 Jewish men in concentration camps in a coordinated attack being called Kristallnacht — the Night of Broken Glass.

SIXTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
London, England, September 3, 1939: Today Britain and France have declared war on Nazi Germany — two days after Nazi Germany invaded Western Poland. Here in London we are also receiving reports that the Soviet Union — in a secret agreement with Nazi Germany — is now moving to occupy Eastern Poland.

SEVENTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
Paris, France, June 14, 1940: Nazi German forces have occupied Paris unopposed.

EIGHTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
Warsaw, Poland, Fall of 1940: The Nazis have “resettled” 400,000 Polish Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto, an area so small that there are 7.2 people to a single room. Hunger and disease are killing thousands.

JUDITH
I was eight years old, the youngest of three children, when the Russians occupied my hometown in Lithuania at the start of World War II. My father had died in 1938. He had not lived to see the Nazis invade Western Poland, followed by the Russians occupying Eastern Poland.

Judith picks up a small cloth bag at her feet.

JUDITH
The Russians now occupying Lithuania sent a whole school class away for two weeks in the summer to help us learn to become good Communists. I was away at this camp when the Nazis marched into Lithuania in June of 1941. The non-Jewish children at camp were informed that no harm would cone to them. We Jewish children were immediately separated from our non-Jewish friends.

She puts down the cloth bag.

JUDITH
One evening a counselor woke 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 a letter. She reads it aloud.

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

Judith acts climbing into a sack on the ground.

JUDITH
He put me into an empty sack and filled it with hay and potatoes. He warned me that making a sound could cost my life as well as his. Then he drove his horse and wagon all night. Every time the wagon stopped, I felt that this was the last breath I would ever take. When we arrived at his house, he tied me up in the basement to ensure I would not run away.

Judith rises from the ground.

JUDITH
When we finally reached my home, my mother hugged me and broke out crying.

Judith looks at the audience.

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

A loud KNOCK sounds.

JUDITH
A few weeks after I safely returned from camp, in the middle of the night there was a knock at our door. Our windows were smashed. The German Gestapo dragged us outside and threw us in to trucks. Our Christian neighbors cheered and threw rocks and stones at us.

NINTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
Kiev, Ukraine, September 30, 1941: The Nazis continue to advance into Russian-occupied territory. We have received reports that Nazi death squads have shot thousands of Jews in Babi Yar, a ravine outside Kiev where thousands of dead and wounded Jews have been buried.

TENTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
Washington D.C., December 11, 1941: Today the U.S. declared war on Nazi Germany — four days after the Japanese attack on U.S. naval forces stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

ELEVENTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
Paris, France, July 1942: French policemen are reported to have rounded up Jewish men, women and children. These Jews were then temporarily imprisoned for several days in a cycling stadium without food or water before deportation to their deaths in Auschwitz concentration camp.

POLISH COUNTESS
During World War II my husband, Count Stefan Humnicki, and I were allowed to remain on our estate in Poland. The Nazis had taken over much of the private property in Poland, yet they allowed my husband to keep his land to provide for the Germans. When a request was made to grow vegetables and we did not have enough workers, a German officer agreed to assign Jews to do the work.

The Polish Countess hesitates.

POLISH COUNTESS
In late November of 1942 the Nazis came for the Jews working on our estate. In the early hours of a cold and frosty morning, some Nazis– aided by the Polish police from a nearby village — unexpectedly came with a number of farm carts. Shouting and cursing, the armed men broke down the door and dragged, pushed and herded the men, women and children on the waiting carts.

She pauses to catch her breath.

POLISH COUNTESS
One of my trusted employees inspected the former quarters of the Jewish workers and found a young Jewish boy hiding in the bread oven. We persuaded the child of 10 or 12 years to come out from his hiding place. When he saw me with tears in my eyes, he said quite calmly, “Please don’t cry. I know I must die.”

She trembles.

POLISH COUNTESS
I took the boy into my arms and determined that Aron Perelman would not die. At tremendous risk I hid him in a room shut off during remodeling. Only I and one trusted manservant saw to the boy. We got him in good shape physically, but he could not get over the shock of having watched his parents being murdered. During the following months we were several times warned through the local grapevine that our house was to be searched by the Germans. Each time Aron was taken to the forest until the search was over and then brought back.

TWELFTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
Copenhagen, Denmark, Fall of 1943: Nazi plans to deport all Danish Jews to Germany have been prevented. In a massive act of defiance against the Nazis, more than 7,200 of Denmark’s 8,000 Jews were hidden in Danish fishing boat and ferried to neutral Sweden.

THIRTEENTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
Paris, France, August 25, 1944: Paris has been liberated from the Nazis!

JUDITH
In the summer or early fall of 1944 we were once again hauled into trucks and transported from Auschwitz to another concentration camp — Stutthof. There, whatever hair remained on our heads after being shaved at Auschwitz was torn out by hand. A number was tattooed on my arm with a needle. Electrical barbed wire surrounded the camp. Every morning, as in Auschwitz, we stood in line for roll call amongst the dead bodies.

Judith looks over to the side.

JUDITH
One day as I stood in line I saw something thrown over from the men’s section. I ran over and picked it up. It was a note telling us that the Allies were winning. I quickly swallowed the note.

She looks up as if at a guard.

JUDITH
The guard saw me, and because I would not reveal what the note said, the camp commandant forced me to remain in the yard all night without clothes on. He amused himself by burning my legs with his cigar.

She yelps as in sudden pain, then forces herself to go on talking.

JUDITH
Then came the day my mother was taken to the gas chambers. I clung to her side as she was herded along with the others. A guard approached me.

JUDTIH AS GUARD
You are too young to die.

JUDITH
He raised his gun.

JUDITH AS GUARD
If you can get out of my range before I count to 10, you can live.

Judith pauses, this is so hard.

JUDITH
It was terrible leaving my mother like that. I remember running so very fast, hearing my mother’s last cry to me: “Run faster, my daughter!”

Judith wipes tears from her eyes.

JUDITH
The day of my liberation, May 5, 1945 — three days before Victory in Europe Day — was the most wonderful day of my life.

POLISH COUNTESS
At the end of the war my husband and I fled from the advancing Russian troops, leaving Aron, the little boy we had so desperately hidden from the Nazis. Then 30 years later I in Brazil and Aron in Israel were unexpectedly reconnected through another of my Jewish workers who had miraculously survived.

The Polish Countess smiles.

POLISH COUNTESS
I think of the avenue in Israel lined with trees, one for every person who helped save a Jewish life during the Holocaust. There must be a great many with Polish names, names of many less fortunate than my husband and I, those who paid with their own lives for trying to save the lives of their neighbors, believing that we are all each other’s keepers.

FOURTEENTH RADIO ANNOUNCER
German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoeller — who was imprisoned during the war in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps — is credited with saying the following: “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

ALL TOGETHER
These horrific crimes against humanity can happen again — anywhere — anytime — to any group of people. All it takes is each of us allowing the thin edge of the wedge to grow so wide until — there is no turning back.