Holocaust, from the Greek means burnt offering.
Shoah, from Hebrew, means catastrophe.
How does language reflect an idea?
I find myself using Shoah to describe the immense loss to our civilisation of more than six million Jews as well as Roma and Sinti, homosexual, Communists, the ‘disabled’ and all who were labelled ‘undesirable’ by the Nazis.
Is the central image of the Jew as murderer of the Christian saviour still the cancer that pervades our society? Was the Shoah the consequence of centuries of conspiracy theories about Jews?
These are the questions that lie underneath the oldest European prejudice-antisemitism.
In 2021, we found antisemitic stereotypes presented on the English stage. We cannot ignore this. Art matters.
On this year’s Memorial Day we do not, sadly, only commemorate history, we also bear witness to Othering and a language that still promulgates the idea that humans are divided into races.
Our postings this week will reveal our own fight against historical and current misinformation through performance, text and personal testimony.
Roma and Sinti People
“Europe’s Roma and Sinti people (often labelled as ‘Gypsies’ historically) were targeted by the Nazis for total destruction. The Porrajmos, or Porajmos, which translates to ‘the Devouring’, is the term used to describe the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Roma and Sinti population.”
HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY 27 JANUARY – RECORDING FROM RUTH’S MEMORIES
Ruth Posner’s Memories
Ruth Posner’s memories of being ripped from a happy childhood and forced into the Warsaw Ghetto show where antisemitism leads.
The rise of antisemitism in our society must be challenged.
We must not allow the blood libel or conspiracy theories rooted in English Literature to permeate our culture.
One woman’s voice says it all.
Continue reading “HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY 27 JANUARY – RECORDING FROM RUTH’S MEMORIES”THE CORRIDOR OF LIGHT
Holocaust Memorial Day 2022
Here are the final moments of our production of The Dybbuk.
You can kill a people but you can never kill their culture.
The ghosts remain to haunt the next generations.
I know it sounds strange but I am haunted by faces, different accents, different bodies, all the lost cousins and aunts and uncles who I want to have known. I see a blonde woman, a dark man, a curly redhead, a fair boy. I don’t know who they are but they often come to me in dreams. They say that a person can be filled with the soul of another and that soul, which has died too early, is a dybbuk, but I, I, I, have so many dybbuks.
Continue reading “THE CORRIDOR OF LIGHT”Where was the Joan of Arc to stop the Holocaust of Black and Jew?
Reader: Samantha Pearl
I am a saint because I saved France from the English. But a real saint, a saint worthy of the name, would have stood at the ramp as the trains arrived, as the orchestra played Strauss.
A real saint would have shouted ‘get away, take their guns and kill them because they are already digging the pits for your bodies.’
A real saint would have stood on the African shore and sunk the boats waiting to steal the people from their land.
Where was the Joan of Arc to stop the Holocaust of Black and Jew?
Continue reading “Where was the Joan of Arc to stop the Holocaust of Black and Jew?”How can theatre bear testimony to the annihilation of a people?
Holocaust Memorial Day 27th January 2022
Pascal Theatre Company has produced plays sourced by living testimony to commemorate a vibrant culture, language and history that was mostly destroyed in the Shoah.
Our refusal to remain silent has constructed a legacy of testimony from survivors and their children.