The Holocaust in drama: 3-12-12

However it's done, the task of teaching young people about the Holocaust must be accomplished. And parents and teachers are finding many ways to do that, including using the resources of the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education.

But drama can be a tool, too.

And the other evening my co-author and friend Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn was privileged to visit the young actors who will appear in an upcoming production by Culture House of "The Diary of Anne Frank." (That's Anne in the photo here.)

As you know, I'm sure, Anne Frank's family was hidden by a non-Jewish family in Amsterdam to try to escape the death that Hitler's Nazi regime had purposed for all of Europe's Jews in World War II. Anne kept a diary that was found after her death, and it has become perhaps the best-known Holocaust-era story.

Jacques spoke to the cast about the Holocaust, particularly through the eyes of the survivors and the non-Jews who saved them that we wrote about in our recent book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust.

The play will be presented May 4, 5 and 6 at the Just-Off Broadway Theatre, 3051 Penn Valley Dr.,
Kansas City. I wish I could see it, but I'll be in Georgia for the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. You, however, can buy tickets by clicking here.

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MORE RADICAL NONSENSE

And now the pro-Santorum pastor who has said some terrible things about gays and lesbians (I wrote about that here) is asking Mitt Romney to denounce his "racist religion." No wonder people get turned off religion -- with leaders like this. Yikes.