‘Vermin’, ‘parasite’, a ‘flea’ that needs to be exterminated. Those are the vile words that are shouted at the Jew who weeps and repents his actions on the stage.
For we the audience of A Lesson from Auschwitz at Churchill Theatre in Bromley are the next generation of Nazi SS soldiers being brainwashed to treat the victims of the holocaust as worthless sub-beings.
An intimate production by Brother Wolf, the play consists of just two actors: the intimidating Rudolf Höss, played by Eric Colvin as the Nazi soldier, and Abraham Könisberg, portrayed by James Hyland, who barely manages to stand on his feet.
He wears a chalkboard around his neck, etched with ‘Ich Bin Zurük’, meaning he’s an escapee.
Unfortunately, he is now to be punished and made an example of in-front of the roomful of trainee Hitlerites.
It makes for uncomfortable viewing, as the lesson from Auschwitz is actually 25 lashings against the prisoner’s blistering back.
And with each rise and fall of the whip, we’re told that showing sympathy towards the prisoners is a sign of weakness, how no Jew is spared – women and children won’t leave the camp alive and how a ‘genius’ has developed a deadly gas substance which can kill more than 2,000 people per day.
Even better, the healthy Jews will build the contraptions ie the showers, which will ultimately kill their own kind – it’s ‘political hygiene’ at its finest.
The rest, as they say, is history.
It’s hard to find anything enjoyable about this play given the bleak subject matter, and in all honesty, I was relieved it was over after just an hour.
But Hyland, the SS soldier, was convincing as the dominatrix and Colvin pulled on all the right emotions.
We’ve all heard the tales of horror and survival from the camps, but what was different about A Lesson from Auschwitz was how it flipped the norm so it was told from the side of the Germans.
However the tales of death and destruction in Nazi-occupied Poland are retold, the lessons from Auschwitz must live on today so that history never repeats itself.
In commemoration of the 70th anniversary since the liberation of Auschwitz, the play’s dedicated to all the victims – those who were murdered and those who survived.