On Being Jewish on a Theater/Museum Visit to NYC
January 2025
Day 1: My daughter and I arrived at the cafe at the Neue Galerie 20 minutes before opening and had to wait outside in the cold. In the 20 minutes in which my gloved hands became numb I thought about standing for roll call in January 1945 at Auschwitz. How did those prisoners in such weakened condition survive for hours standing in roll call twice every day without winter clothing?
Then inside Café Sabarsky — a replica of a Viennese café — I thought of how even less likely Jews accustomed to that gemütlich atmosphere in Vienna could have survived a day in the harsh Polish winters.
Later that day NYC friends met us for lunch at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The husband’s parents had come to the U.S on their honeymoon in 1937, and relatives had begged them not to return to Vienna. The newly married couple did return, and then had to be smuggled out of Vienna in 1938.
Day 2: At the Museum of Modern Art we read the following wall plaque. The title “Weimar Citizens” caught my eye because I have been working on the chapter of my in-progress book “Things You Didn’t Know About the Holocaust” that deals with the Nazi Party’s destruction of the Weimar Republic.
“…The Weimar era was marked by extreme political and economic turmoil as well as intense creative ferment. Hopes for social progress turned to cynicism as unemployment, hyperinflation, and political extremism set in.
“Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, and other artists responded by embracing a clinical, matter-of-fact realism that repudiated the abstract, spiritual ideals that had guided artists before the war [WWI]. Traumatized by the conflict (all three had served in the German military) and disillusioned by its aftermath, they cast a cold eye on their fellow Germans…”
And we all know where that “political extremism” led.
Day 3: We had an unpleasant shock. Visiting the Museum of Broadway — we began, as directed by the docents, with exhibits on the history of American theater starting in the 18th Century. As the historical timeline progressed, we expected to read about the contributions of the Yiddish theater, including the career of Jewish immigrant and great Yiddish actor Boris Thomashefsky(1868-1939).
Nothing until the historic timeline gets to the 1990s where a wall placard reads: “In 1990, Those Were the Days brought “The Shtetl” and “The Music Hall” to Broadway in an intimate two-part revue performed in both English and Yiddish. […] Created by Zalmen Mlotek and Moishe Rosenfeld, the musical honored the legacy of a vibrant and influential Yiddish stage that flourished on New York’s Lower East Side in the late 1800s and early 1900s. One of the district’s most formidable figures was Boris Thomashefsky, who opened a Yiddish theatre on Broadway in 1923.” (boldface mine)
On the other hand, that evening we saw a performance of “Cabaret” that included the original final line in the gorilla song “If You Could See Her”: submissions“She wouldn’t look Jewish at all.”
The gorilla song scene had special meaning for me because my husband and I had been on the “Cabaret” movie set in 1971 in Munich when this scene was being blocked out. (We were stationed with the U.S. Army in Munich and I had written to the film’s producer, Cy Feuer, asking to visit the set.)
Day 4: On the way to the airport, we visited the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust and were very impressed by the exhibit “The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do.” (We also bought 10 books in the gift shop.)
Back home in Los Angeles: Over Shabbat I started reading the children’s Holocaust books I had just bought. And this reinforced why I have started my book project and YouTube podcast playlist “Things You Didn’t Know About the Holocaust.” One of the books (ranked very high on Amazon) has several factual errors along with some interpretative historical errors.
One example of a factual error: a two-page photo with the caption “Arrival of a train bringing Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in Poland, circa 1942.” Since the Hungarian Jews weren’t sent to Auschwitz until 1944, this caption is incorrect. In fact, later in the book this sentence appears: “In just one month in 1944, Germans sent 440,000 Jews from Hungary to their deaths.” Thus either the photo in 1942 was not of Hungarian Jews or the caption should have read “circa 1944.”
Why do I think these “seemingly little” errors are important to call out? Because they can give fuel to Holocaust distorters or deniers: For example, if you are wrong about that date, maybe you are wrong about the number of Jews and others murdered by the Nazis.
When I launched my nonfiction theater project “Thin Edge of the Wedge,” I eventually had to create a page on my website for historical facts. People would contact me, for example, that a firsthand account of getting a tattoo in a concentration camp other than Auschwitz was incorrect. I provided information on my website explaining such facts as, while tattoos at Auschwitz are the most well known, these were also done at some other places. There were also some at Auschwitz who did not get tattoos (depending on when these people arrived in the camp’s timeline).
As I have learned, everything we think we know about the Holocaust can be incorrect or wrong because the historical facts depend on the exact date in the timeline of 1933-1945, the individual’s status (perhaps in the Sonderlager or Sternlager at Bergen-Belsen where they were allowed to wear their own clothing), the location (ghettos were not uniform), and many other details.
What is important is for all of us – Jews and non-Jews – to ensure that we honor the memory of the victims and the rescuers, and that we ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are effectively taught in an effort to prevent such a large-scale conflagration from ever happening again.