Ryan, a student from an alternative school for troubled teens in Pt. Huron, Mich., wrote to Esther Raab after seeing the play “Dear Esther,” which tells of her experience as a survivor of Sobibor Concentration Camp in Poland.
“I was heart broke when I went to see the play how you and the other Jews lived through the Nazi camp. Thank you for telling me your story for that it will change my life forever. Love always, Ryan.”
Although this particular letter is not part of the play, letters are an important element in Raab’s story. When she began, cautiously, to talk to schoolchildren about her Holocaust experiences they responded to her in letters.
Playwright Richard Rashke then used those letters to recreate a dramatic story of Raab’s experience in Sobibor and her life since. The play was first produced in 1998 at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and has since played in professional theaters, schools, colleges and Jewish community centers around the country.
Next Act Theatre will present its production of “Dear Esther” Sept. Sept. 16 through Oct. 17 at its Off-Broadway Theatre, 324 N. Water St. in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward. Last year, Next Act performed a dramatic reading of the play.
“The dynamic [aspect of the play] is that she makes the first step and the students come back and want more, and she opens herself, and they want more, and she opens more, and as she opens, she faces Sobibor and she gives more and more and she heals more and more. And this is what really happened to Esther,” said Rashke during a telephone interview from his home in Washington, D.C.
Rashke, a non-Jew who was born in Milwaukee and lived on the near south side until he finished sixth grade, stumbled on the name Sobibor by chance. He was searching in the Library of Congress for a mid-level Nazi on which to base a character for a novel.
“It was in the process of this research that I first saw the word Sobibor, which I had never heard before. I was curious — I had read some books — I knew all the names of the Nazis and what they did. I knew about Auschwitz and Treblinka.
“I found the name Sobibor three times and all it said was that it was a death camp. I couldn’t find much of anything else about it, but finally I found a footnote [about an uprising of 600 inmates] and I realized it must [have been] the biggest escape of the war.
“Sasha Pechersky, who engineered the escape, wrote a pamphlet, which I found. I thought it would be a good story but I couldn’t find any more information about it, so I put it aside,” said Rashke.
“One day, in 1980 or ’81, I read an account in the Washington Post which mentioned Sobibor … [including] the names of three or four survivors [other than Esther].”
Rashke contacted a survivor living in Santa Barbara, Calif. This led to contact with other Sobibor survivors. Eventually, he traveled to Brazil, the former Soviet Union and Israel to speak with 19 survivors.
“I finally found Esther [in 1981]. She was the most balanced, the most interested in the truth. She was the one I could most trust and we became close,” said Rashke.
Rashke eventually wrote an account in the book “Escape from Sobibor” (Houghton Mifflin, 1982) and it was made into a television docu-drama in 1987.
As for the play, said Rashke, “Like most writers I didn’t start to write my idea until the characters started conversing in my head. My goal was to dissect a survivor on the stage — to show what is going on inside her head.”
“How? Why not create another Esther — a young Esther,” he said. There were so many other voices and the young Esther’s voice was only a whisper. I had to wait patiently and she grew. I chose to listen to her and after a while her voice became louder.
“After I wrote the play I found out she is a memory, a therapist, a loving sister, and a friend [to the older Esther]. She is unique in that she is working to disappear. She is so successful that in the denouement, the young Esther disappears,” he said.
“It is an extremely personal story born out of Rashke’s observing [Raab’s] beginning a healing process,” said David Cecsarini, Next Act’s producing artistic director.
“[The play] is imaginative in its construction, vignettes interwoven with narration,” said Cecsarini. “The children’s letters come into play when Esther finds it impossible to go on. She needs the energy to go on” and she finds it in the knowledge that the victims of the Holocaust are not forgotten.
“The children restore hope for Esther,” he said. “[They] demonstrate that hope is a natural condition, but it can also be squashed out. With hope comes dignity and self-respect. Hope makes us human — animals can’t have hope because they cannot understand the future.”
And it’s a universal story, Rashke insists. “This story is about a race, a religious group, a single woman, but it’s also about tragedy on any level.”
“That’s the beauty of a universal story — it lasts. The truth never changes — the struggle to survive, the thirst for justice, the need to heal, the need to love first before you can be loved. It’s not a generic story; it’s a story of real superman/woman stuff,” he said.
The production is sponsored by The Schoenleber Foundation.
Twelve of the performances will be followed by talkbacks, including one on Sun. Sept. 19, at which the playwright will be present. Tickets range from $22-$30 and can be purchased by telephone at the Off-Broadway Theatre Box Office, 414-278-0765.
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