Kindertransport (NHB Modern Plays)

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Knight Foundation and private donors, it was gifted to the University of Miami, Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies, Dr. by Robert Skloot 2022 NJTF HTII Lifetime Achievement Award AHO Winter Conference, Miami, FL I’d like to begin my remarks by asking the question that all of us have been asked often: “Why do you do the work you do? One day Helga arrives when Eva is in her late teens and Eva tells Helga that Lil and Jack have adopted her and she has been naturalised as English, and her name is now Evelyn. Eva is at a Manchester train station waiting for her parents, who promised they would secure their visas and reunite with Eva in England, when a station guard approaches her.

The play tells the story of how nine-year-old Eva, a German Jewish girl, is sent by her parents on the Kindertransport to start a new life with a foster family in Britain just before the outbreak of World War Two. Subsequently the play has been produced in San Francisco with awards, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Austria, Canada and South Africa.

Through flashbacks, the play presents the hardships faced by Eva, a nine-year-old child sent on a Kindertransport and taken in by a British family. It was developed by staff, scholars, artists and volunteers overseen by Arnold Mittelman, founding NJTF President/Project Director, and by Dr. The play also focuses on the now assimilated and completely dislocated Eva’s alienation from her actual mother, a survivor of the Holocaust, and the discovery by Faith, Eva’s daughter, of her mother’s unspoken past. Kindertransport is a play by Diane Samuels, which examines the life, during World War II and afterwards, of a Kindertransport child.

The author's guide to Kindertransport, an invaluable and uniquely authoritative resource for anyone studying, teaching or performing the play.And she presents detailed accounts from the actors, directors, a composer and designer who have contributed to the play’s most notable productions. The play enjoyed a season in London's West End, playing at the Vaudeville Theatre from 9 September to 30 November 1996. The play jumps back and forth between three time periods: 1) Pre-war - in which Helga tries to prepare Eva to leave her home and parents; 2) War - in which Eva is living in England with Lil, adjusting to a new country, and desperately trying to get her parents out of Germany; and 3) Post-war, in which Eva (who has now changed her name to Evelyn) is an adult, has a daughter named Faith, and has intentionally wiped most of her past and her Jewishness out of existence. Eva and Lil fall out as Eva skips her English lessons to go and ask round rich houses if they will give her parents jobs; Lil thinks this makes her seem desperate. Set Text: Kindertransport is a set text for GCSE English Literature (AQA) and AS/A-Level English Literature (WJEC).