Many Holocaust plays feature Jewish teenagers coming of age in the shadow of the death camps. Yet these works often present sentimentalised, redemptive stories, such as the 1950s production of The Diary of Anne Frank. They foreground certain narratives to the exclusion of others, such as queer experiences. Speaking testimony, however, can bring such stories back into the present.
How might we use the stage to tell a different story about the Holocaust to young adults? This was the conversation with which we – Anna Hájková, a Holocaust historian, and Erika Hughes, a scholar and director of Holocaust theatre – began our project. We chose to focus on the marginalised topic of the queer coming-of-age experience because it offered a powerful counterpoint to the usual stories of the Holocaust.
Using the tools of documentary theatre, we presented one woman’s account of queer desire and survival in ghettos and concentration camps, centering a non-stereotypical perspective of life in the Holocaust. We invited audiences to abandon their preconceptions of young people’s stories from the camps.
