Primary Sources: The Holocaust

The production of theatre art continues under the most severe circumstances, even under dictatorships.  After the Nazi Party gained power in Germany and established its Third Reich (1933-1945), amateur and professional theatre artists maintained their stagecraft skills as best they could.  Not only did German non-Jewish actors continue to work in their professions, but Jewish-born theatre practitioners in Germany also found creative niches for their art-making. The Nazis imposed censorship laws and stipulations on cultural activity, especially by Jews, in Germany and occupied Europe during the Holocaust years. Nonetheless, a wealth of cultural production persisted, even in places one may think impossible for any kind of creativity.  Forms of theatre and related musical events endured in a cultural organization solely for Jews until 1941 – the Jewish Kulturbund theatre in Nazi Germany; in early concentration camps for political prisoners; in transit and internment camps across Western Europe like Westerbork (the Netherlands); in such enclosed ghettos as Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków and Vilna; at the model ghetto known as Theresienstadt and in concentration camps and killing centres like Dachau and Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Even after World War II ended, actor-inmates organized Yiddish-language performances in Displaced Persons’ Camps like Bergen-Belsen. Music and the Holocaust 

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