Project THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE: Educating Through Theater to Address Antisemitism and Hate
The nonfiction play THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE utilizes firsthand accounts of Holocaust survivors and saviors in a dramatic overall historic timeline narrative. These first-person monologues help students experience a closer emotional connection to the historic past and better understand the need today to safeguard democracy.
Similar to how Arthur Miller’s 1953 play THE CRUCIBLE was about the Salem witch trials in colonial Massachusetts while exposing the perils of McCarthyism, THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE is about the Holocaust as a cautionary tale for today about the dangerous consequences of antisemitism and hate.
Silence and inaction in the presence of antisemitism and hate can have deadly consequences.
FOR PROACTIVE — NOT REACTIVE — RESPONSES TO ANTISEMITISM AND HATE:
THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE free project for schools
Also available in a professional German translation — www.SchritteInDenAbgrund.com
Phyllis Zimbler Miller and Susan Tresser Chodakiewitz determined to do something to motivate empowering rather than fearful responses.
With Susan’s encouragement, Phyllis wrote the nonfiction play THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE based primarily on firsthand accounts of Holocaust survivors and saviors that Phyllis published as well as interviews that she did as an editor and reporter at the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent newspaper in the 1970s. These accounts have been burning in her heart since then, and she believes she was given a responsibility to tell these accounts as a cautionary warning to the current generation.
Putting these firsthand accounts into theatrical form is a powerful way of getting students and others to experience empathy and confront the dangerous consequences of hate.
THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE is set in an historical timeline showing how Nazi military aggression and anti-Jewish activity proceeded with little or no world reaction — until it was too late. The play contains no fictional material — everything is either based on firsthand testimony or historical research.
This project is dedicated to German Jew Henry Einstein — may his memory be for a blessing.
A Jewish resident of Frankfurt, Germany, said that THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE is a: “Play of yesterday, play of today, play of tomorrow.”
The project’s goal is to get the play in front of students, religious groups, and community organizations to educate and spark engaging conversations about what can happen when people allow the step-by-step encroachment of their civil liberties.
The Claims Conference survey that identified the lack of Holocaust knowledge in the U.S. was shocking (see blog post at www.millermosaicllc.com/history/holocaust-remembrance-day-2018/).
This is what one reader said after reading the play:
I love the way you made the story so personal about your own experience. That served as a perfect platform to deliver a lot of historical information that might otherwise have sounded dry to young people, but it doesn’t the way PZ relays it. The stories are individualized and chilling.
Those characters really came to life for me starting with Judith and the unimaginable horror of being 47 pounds when she finally was liberated, not to mention the idea of Christians cheering when they watched Jews being shot. So important to mention how many died of sickness and starvation, not just by gas or bullets, too.
Great reminder that it wasn’t just Jews – the Gypsies [Romani], blacks, gays, handicapped, frail or elderly, etc., were vulnerable as well.
View April 3, 2022, presentation “Using Theater to Create Empathy for Holocaust Victims and Rescuers” for the Liberation75.org Holocaust education and antisemitism teachers training event.
Read this blog post for American Education Week 2019: American Education Week 2019: Educating Through Theater of the Dangerous Consequences of Antisemitism and Racism
Read this article for Literary Heist: Germany Today Faces Its Dark Past
Read this blog post: As an American Jew I Always Have a Current Passport
Film project about Polish-born Israeli Nazi hunter Tuviah Friedman: Credited in Israel as the person who found Final Solution architect Adolf Eichmann, Tuviah Friedman is given long-overdue recognition in the screenplay THE RED LETTER.
THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE free project for schools