Holocaust Remembrance

Note from the Director—Jamibeth Margolis

From the very first time that I read the script and listened to the score of Warsaw in 2004, I knew I wanted to direct this show. I am grateful to John Atkins and William Wade who welcomed me as a part of the Warsaw team. I was so drawn to this musical because of the important and relevant story that it tells through John’s heartfelt book and lyrics and William’s soaring and emotional score. This show strikes just the right seriousness of tone and speaks to today’s audience who surely can relate to the ideas of love and loss that our characters face.

I am also the granddaughter of Holocaust Survivors. I grew up with a very strong understanding of this subject matter and am continually saddened to find just how many Americans are unaware of the atrocities of the Holocaust. My grandmother, Janet Moskowitz, a survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbruck, was a special inspiration to me all my life and an example of the bravery and courage needed to survive in the concentration camps. She has shared her story with many high school and college students and recently chronicled her story in The Miracle of Survival: Angels at My Back. She taught me the importance of never letting anyone forget about this horrific time in history.

Warsaw is another way of making a very significant event of the Holocaust known and accessible to today’s audience. I dedicate my work with Warsaw to my grandmother who recently passed away. Her generosity of spirit and courage will never be forgotten. And much like “Roman,” “Benjamin,” and “Franya” and all of the ghetto fighters in Warsaw, she was willing to fight seemingly unbeatable odds. Our characters are constantly facing life or death situations and playing each moment with the stakes at that high a level is one of the things I stress most in my direction. Warsaw is now gaining tremendous momentum. It is my hope that we will quickly move our show to Broadway and to audiences across America and abroad. I feel that the urgency of sharing this story is crucial and hope that our show will be fully realized while there are still Holocaust survivors alive to see it.

Sol's Story

There are legions of inspiring stories by Holocaust survivors, but one story that caught the imagination of warsaw's bookwriter John Atkins is Sol Rosenberg's Sol's Story: A Triumph of the Human Spirit. Like Roman, the hero of warsaw, Sol embodies the youthful idealist who, through a combination of courage, stubbornness, and perhaps naïvety, refused to allow himself to be broken by the Nazis' intent on destruction. Like Roman, Sol supported his family by smuggling goods across the ghetto walls. Like Benjamin, Sol managed a daring and inconceivable escape from the Treblinka concentration camp—one of the few successful escapes recorded. Sol is also one of the few surviving participants of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Sol continues to live and work in John Atkins's hometown in rural Louisiana, where Sol has tirelessly related his story of survival to help bring awareness to an area of the U.S. that is relatively untouched by the shadows of the Holocaust. Sol's story is a testament to the spirit we hope to convey in warsaw.

Other Voices of the Warsaw Ghetto

The following personal accounts may be accessed via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at: www.ushmm.org.

Vladka (Fagele) Peltel Meed—Born in Warsaw, Poland 1923

Vladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw Ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos. She describes the deportation of her mother and brother from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka.

Raszka (Roza) Galek Brunswic—Born in Sochocin, Poland 1920

Roza’s family moved to Warsaw in 1934. She had just begun college when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. In 1940, the Germans sealed the Warsaw Ghetto where her parents were shot during a roundup. Roza escaped and went into hiding. From her hiding place, she saw the burning of the ghetto in the 1943 uprising. She had false papers stating she was a Polish Catholic (Maria Kowalczyk), and was deported by cattle train to Germany in June 1943. She worked on a farm until liberation in 1945. She describes a roundup in the Warsaw Ghetto and her escape from deportation.

Abraham Lewent—Born in Warsaw, Poland 1924

Abraham was born to a Jewish family in the Polish capital of Warsaw. His grandfather owned a clothing factory and retail store, which his father managed. Abraham’s family lived in a Jewish section of Warsaw and he attended a Jewish school. Warsaw’s Jewish community was the largest in Europe, and made up nearly one-third of the population of the city. Abraham was deported to Majdanek and then to seven other Nazi camps, including Buchenwald. He was liberated in transit to the Dachau camp on April 30, 1945.