Making hate history

by Nicola Buskell

Harrow Arts Center delighted, inspired and educated audiences last week by a theatre performance with a difference. And Then They Came For Me debuted in Harrow on Wednesday, December ninth at the Travellers Studio and was a stunning success.

The play tells the story of Eva Schloss, then Eva Geiringer, who is Anne Frank’s step sister and knew her during her time in Amsterdam. Eva was a jewish girl of thirteen from Vienna, but forced to move to Amsterdam.

She had grown up as the Nationalist Socialist movement came to power and suffered through the steady increase in anti-Semitism, leading up to and during the Second World War. Then gone into hiding, moving from building to building until betrayed and sent to Auschwitz. “It was luck for us that we survived” said Eva.

Played by Alexandra Vevers, the performance shows the emotions and fears that Eva and her family experienced when hiding and as they were captured. Her thoughts as a young teenage girl are very well portrayed and show her humanity during those terrible years. Even her lack of understanding for how serious the situation really was is presented in a way that today’s youth can connect with.

Eva’s story is told using live actors and with the accompaniment of video footage. The footage consists of real interviews with both Eva Schloss and Ed Silverberg, then known as Helmuth Silberberg, who was Anne Frank’s sweetheart; known in her diary as “Hello”. His tale of escape from persecution and transport to the camps is also told and played by Michael Gambaro. The role of Anne Frank in the play is very small and more of a cameo appearance, played by Shani Perez.

The interviews help narrate the play as events unfold and added a different dynamic to what you might normally expect from a stage show. Sometimes the cast spoke over the voices of the narrating holocaust survivors, other times seeming to ask questions, which were then answered via the interviews. This created a sense of interactivity between the actors and the video screen.

Unknown to the audience, Eva Schloss sat among them during all four performances over Wednesday and Thursday and stayed behind to answer questions at the end. On Wednesday morning’s performance, a group of school children attending for an educational experience and were able to interview Eva.

One question asked was if she could forgive the German officers who took her father and bother and so many others from her. She answered, “No, I don’t want to forgive those people. They are not what I consider to be people.”

She went on to explain that the officers had been brainwashed and conditioned to become so uncaring and inhumane. “They were trained like a little dog.” This was explored during the performance by actor Barnaby McCarther, who plays a Hitler Youth instructed to care for a puppy and then later strangle it.

Eva is a good friend to the director, who aims to bring the play to many different audiences, not only to show how very real the holocaust was, but also to highlight issues within modern society; specifically those that deal with religious hatred and intolerance.

Featured at the start of the play was a video slideshow ‘Making Hate History’ accompanied by the song ‘Know My Name’, which was especially written for the play which lasted one hour.