Korczak’s Kids: Theater Review

It is sad to watch. The children in the Korczak Orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 put on a play the day before the Nazis come to send them all off to Treblinka. You sit and watch, and you know there is nothing you can do to stop the inevitable. You cannot change history. It has happened. The children were rounded up and sent off to die in concentration camps.

Some resisted. The story of the Warsaw Ghetto that I cherish is the story of the heroic resistance of the Jews who refused to be passive victims and fought back against their oppressors. The Nazis finally had to level every building in the Ghetto to stamp out the resistance, and by that time many of the Polish Jews had joined the partisans or the Russian Red Army. Their resistance was not futile, it was an inspiration that helped turn the tide against the Nazis.

But these are children. They cannot be expected to take part in the resistance, though one tough and independent child runs off re fusing to be a victim. In the play within the play, he was the child who played the Headman—the symbolic Nazi. Is the lesson here, "You can't survive unless you become like your enemy?"
Korczak protects the children as long as he can. He spins fantastical tales that transport the children to another world. They will have fantasy to feed upon until the end. Korczak could have saved himself, but he chose to stay with the children to make their final moments free from fear. His tragic sacrifice is a triumph of the creative imagination over death.

The script by Jeffrey Hatcher is taut and delicately understated. The direction by Eric Simonson is confident and smooth. Clyde Lund, as Korczak, was genuine. The power of his performance settles in days later and quickly brings you once again to tears as you remember it. The set design and scenic effects were restrained but powerful. But, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the production was the tremendous strength of the supporting cast. Minneapolis is, indeed, fortunate in having a superb company of actors that move easily from one theater to another. They were all great. No one had to be carried. Special mention should go to Barbara Kingsley, Claudia Wilkens, Dean Holt and Gerald Drake.

Another sadness and a horrible irony meet us as we leave the theater and read about the children of the refugees that survived the camps and built Israel, Ariel Sharon and his generation, and how they are building fences around the Gaza Strip that are concentration camps for Palestinians. And we read about the U. S. Army advance on Baghdad described as a Blitzkreig. And we cannot help but wonder, "Did we become the enemy we fought in World War II?"

Thankfully, there is resistance: The Labor Party in Israel refuses to collaborate with Sharon, and resistance in America to the war in Iraq is already at a level much higher than it was at any point during the Vietnam War.