Melrose Park, PA –

Gratz College is partnering with Theatre Ariel to provide a series of performances of the play, Survivors, based on the testimonies of 10 Holocaust survivors from Rochester, New York.

A performance for the community at large will take place on April 17, 2023, at Gratz College, in commemoration of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Several performances for middle and high school students are also scheduled at public schools throughout Montgomery County and Philadelphia from April 18 - 28, 2023.

As the population of Holocaust survivors diminishes daily, it is more difficult to find speakers to share their experiences with students as a warning of what can happen when state-sponsored racism is permitted and encouraged, as it was under the Nazis from 1933-1945.  A 2020 50-State survey by the Claims Conference indicated that 63% of American adults under 40 did not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Shoah. For these reasons, this play was commissioned and specifically designed for middle and high school students.

The original production was created and produced by Center Stage, a professional theatre company based in the Jewish Community Center of Rochester, New York, in consultation with the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester’s CHAI (Center for Holocaust Awareness and Information). Ralph Meranto, Artistic Director of Center Stage commissioned LA-based award-winning playwright and screenwriter, Wendy Kout, to create the play. About her original play, Kout writes,

“SURVIVORS was created to teach the history of the Holocaust through the enacted eye-witness accounts of ten survivors.  These indomitable individuals no longer with us, live on through the play's young cast sharing their stories and life lessons, encouraging hope and tolerance and calling for action against today's genocides, hatred and bullying.  Never Forget.  Never Again.  Never is now.  And now we fight through Holocaust education.”

Artistic Director of Theatre Ariel, Jesse Bernstein, is delighted to be a part of this program, which features six professional actors from the region. Of this experience, Jesse comments,

“Theatre is a powerful tool for teaching history but also, and more importantly, empathy. When middle- and high-school students watch actors who aren't much older than them portray the experiences of young people through the rise of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, the students can relate on an emotional level to what Jews in Europe went through. That emotional connection creates empathy and understanding – which has the potential to prevent history from repeating itself." 

Gratz College is sponsoring this Symposium on the Holocaust for the first time since it transitioned from the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia/Jewish Community Relations Council.  For many years, the Symposium took place in multiple locations with many survivor speakers and hundreds of students. For the first time last year, the Survivors play was introduced as the Symposium’s primary feature. 

In addition to the public performance on April 17, the play is scheduled to be shown to students from several school districts throughout the local area, including: Abington, Lower Moreland, Springfield County, Lower Merion, Perkiomen Valley, Wallingford-Swarthmore, Upper Dublin, and Philadelphia —with an expected total attendance of 4000.

Funds to create a local production were provided by the Foundation for Jewish Day Schools through Pennsylvania's Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) Program.