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Comedy in the Holocaust: the Theresienstadt Cabaret

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Roy Kift
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Abstract

The concentration camp in Theresienstadt in the Czech Republic was unique, in that it was used by the Nazis as a ‘flagship’ ghetto to deceive the world about the real fate of the Jews. It contained an extraordinarily high proportion of VIPs – so-called Prominenten, well-known international personalities from the worlds of academia, medicine, politics, and the military, as well as leading composers, musicians, opera singers, actors, and cabarettists, most of whom were eventually murdered in Auschwitz. The author, Roy Kift, who first presented this paper at a conference on ‘The Shoah and Performance’ at the University of Glasgow in September 1995, is a free-lance dramatist who has been living in Germany since 1981, where he has written award-winning plays for stage and radio, and a prizewinning opera libretto, as well as directing for stage, television, and radio. His new stage play, Camp Comedy, set in Theresienstadt, was inspired by this paper, and includes original cabaret material: it centres on the nightmare dilemma encountered by Kurt Gerron in making the Nazi propaganda film, The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a Town. Roy Kift has contributed regular reports on contemporary German theatre to a number of magazines, including NTQ. His article on the GRIPS Theater in Berlin appeared in TQ39 (1981) and an article on Peter Zadek in NTQ4 (1985).

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 12 , Issue 48 , November 1996 , pp. 299 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

Notes and References

1. The two standard works are by Adler, W. G., Die verheimlichte Wahrheit: Theresienstädter Dokumente, (Tübingen, 1958)Google Scholar, and Theresienstadt 1941–1945: das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft – Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie (Tübingen, 1960). The most prominent publications in English are Green, G., The Artists of Terezin (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, Karas, J., Music in Terezin 1941–1945 (New York, 1985)Google Scholar, Lederer, Z., Ghetto Theresienstadt (London, 1953)Google Scholar, and Schwertfeger, R., Women of Theresienstadt (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar. This last includes many documents previously only available in German, has a good short history of the camp, and an excellent bibliography. Abundant material on the camp can be found in the Theresienstadt Archive and Museum on the Kibbutz Givat Haim-Ichud, 38935 Israel.

2. Gerron's cabaret was neither the first nor the only cabaret in the camp. Others were run by Karel Svenk, Felix Porges (both Czech), Egon Thorn, Hans Hofer, Bobby John, Ernst Morgan, Walter Steiner, and Walter Lindenbaum.

3. The most prominent of contemporary dramatists to have tackled the holocaust through comedy are Peter Barnes, in Laughter, and George Tabori, a Hungarian who writes in English for the German stage, whose best known work is Mein Kampf.

4. There now exists only a twenty-minute fragment of the film, which was shot between 16 August and 11 September 1944. For documentation see Starke, K., Der Fiihrer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt: Bilder-ImpressionenReportagen-Dokumente (Berlin, 1975)Google Scholar; Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–1945: Felsmann, B. and Prümm, K.Kurt Gerron Gefeiert and Gejagt (Berlin, 1992)Google Scholar; Harms, G. and Schmidt, M., ‘Kurt Gerron und das schwarzeste Kapitel der deutschen Filmgeschichte’, Film, No. 7, 1966(Frankfurt/ Main)Google Scholar. Margery, Karel, ‘Theresienstadt 1944–1945: the Nazi Propaganda Film Depicting the Concentration Camp as Paradise’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, XII, No. 2 (1992)Google Scholar. Margery has also written an academic thesis on the film.

5. Leo Strauss also ran his own cabaret before joining Gerron's Karussell. He was the son of the operetta composer, Oscar Strauss.

6. The original text of the song can be found in Migdal, Ulrike, Und die Musik spielt dazu (München, 1986)Google Scholar, which contains an introductory essay, many German texts, and a wealth of reports and reviews written in Theresienstadt itself. The texts can be found in the archives in Yad Vashem. All the translations in the essay are by me. For the original text of ‘Theresienstadt Questions’, see Migdal, p. 71–4.

7. For a stimulating approach to ‘knowingness’ and internal codes of communication in variety theatre, see Bailey, Peter, ‘Conspiracies of Meaning: Music-Hail and the Knowingness of Popular Culture’, Past and Present, CXLIV (08 1994), p. 138–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. The original is rhymed. See Migdal, p. 105–6.

9. Czech slang was rife amongst the inmates. Amongst the most common terms were balicek (packet), cetnik (camp police), buchten (cakes), turin (turnips), and dvakrat (twice, or double portion).

10. In order to prepare for the embellishment, 7,500 inmates were sent to Auschwitz in May 1944. The Red Cross visit took place on 23 June 1944 and the delegation was completely taken in. See their reports in Adler, Die verheimlichte Wahrheit, p. 312.

11. Klüger, Ruth, weiter leben (Göttingen, 1992)Google Scholar.

12. See Weiner's reports on leisure activities in Migdal, p. 131–60.

13. For the original, see Migdal, p. 61–3.

14. For the best summary of ‘endowment’, see Hagen, Uta, Respect for Acting (New York, 1973), p. 112–18Google Scholar.

15. The original has one verse more. Because this is almost untranslatable, I have incorporated its salient points into the ‘Kaffeehaus’ verse. For the original, see Migdal, p. 106–8.

16. Might this be also another indication of internal tensions in the Jewish community in the camp? For the original, see Migdal, p. 85–6.

17. Ibid., p. 90–3.

18. Ibid., p. 100–1.

19. The few radical attempts to criticize the Germans seem to have been censored by the camp Jüdenrat. See Felsmann and Prümm, Kurt Gerron, p. 96.

20. For the original, see Migdal, p. 108–9

21. Gerron was in fact transported to Auschwitz before he had had time to complete the film. The direction was taken over by a Czech called Peceny. See the interview with the cameraman, Ivan Fric, in Felsmann and Priimm, p. 140–4.

22. For the original, see Migdal, p. 109–11.

23. Migdal gives the author as Strauss, but Felsmann and Prümm (p. 99) claim the song might in fact have been written by Manfred Greiffenhagen. The start of the song is very much in the style of Strauss, but the edgier second and particularly the third verse move more towards Greiffenhagen, which leads me to speculate that this might have been a work of collaboration. Greiffenhagen was the Lennon to Strauss's McCartney. For the original text, see Migdal, p. 59–61.