Czech Books Lisa Peschel: rediscovering the forgotten theatre of Terezín
During the Second World War, over 140,000 people were imprisoned in the Terezín ghetto north of Prague. Their only crime was to be Jewish. One in four died in the ghetto itself, and most who survived later perished in other Nazi camps. But despite appalling overcrowding, there was still a semblance of normal life in Terezín. The ghetto’s streets still had names; people would still go to work in the morning, and come home to their cramped barracks at night. And against the odds, Terezín had a thriving cultural life. This included theatre, a fact that gripped the imagination of the American theatrical historian, Lisa Peschel. She has spent years trying to find out more about the texts that were written and performed in the ghetto. Her detective work, in close cooperation with survivors, has yielded an astonishing amount of material, and Lisa has now edited a book that brings some of these texts together. Published in Prague by Akropolis, the book is in Czech and German, but Lisa promises that there will soon be an English edition too. She told me more about her fascinating - and important - research.
Divadelní texty z terezínského ghetta 1941-1945
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