‘Echoes’ Dramatizes Learning about the Holocaust from Students’ Perspectives

By Sandi Masori 

SAN DIEGO — Recently I had the opportunity to attend Echoes of Courage- A Holocaust Education Project, produced by Blue Rose Theater Project.  It’s created and directed by Siobhan Sullivan Crews, and written by students ages 10-16, based on true stories. They call it a project rather than a show because it’s more than just the words in the script. Don’t let the description fool you though, the performance was captivating and moving.

The play opens in a classroom where the kids are learning about the Holocaust and one of the kids says that it was just a hoax. Then another one of the kids answers that her great-aunts Irene and Edith are survivors and that it’s not a hoax.  Later in the play, we learn the true story about how actor Sophia Melamed’s aunts were reunited after the Holocaust.

From there we’re taken into different vignettes of stories of children in the Holocaust, some who survived, some who didn’t. All of the stories true.  The late survivors Max and Rose Schindler of San Diego feature heavily in the play, and their son Steven served as an advisor.

The show was staged on the La Havana Madrid set at New Village Arts, which graciously donated the space for the two-night performance.

Major kudos are due to all the kids involved in the show.  Not only the actors, but also, and especially, to the writers who have been working on the script for the past six years: Talia Baird, Embry Blais, Livia Hollingsworth, Grace Howard, Sophia Melamed, Lila Sprenlemeyer, and Maya Washington.

Kudos also need to go out to the youngest member of the cast, 11-year old Ari Gimbel, who in only two weeks managed to compose and arrange all the music for the show.

The show was deeply moving and I think that everyone involved — cast, crew and audience — was deeply affected.

It was an immersive experience as they partnered with The Butterfly Project and the mobile Holocaust museum sponsored by the Jewish Federation of San Diego.  When you entered the lobby there were ceramic butterflies to paint on all the tables, along with a card telling the story of someone who perished in the Shoah. The butterflies symbolize children who were murdered by the Nazis.  And then when you exited the theater the mobile museum was outside to give more depth to the stories told in the show, and to extend the theme.

I had the chance to chat with co-producer Becky Cherlin Baird from Kids on Stage productions, and her daughter Talia who is one of the actors and writers.

Baird shared with me that the project was Crews’ vision, stemming from her lifelong interest in Anne Frank and the Holocaust, though she’s not Jewish.

Baird and Crews connected in the youth theater world. Crews came to Baird and told her that she wanted to do this project but that few Jewish kids were in the group.  She invited Baird to please come on board to represent the Jewish community and make sure that it was being handled correctly.

At that first meeting six years ago, she asked the kids how many of them had heard of the Holocaust before. And to her shock, many of them had not.   At the time the kids were 11-13, and most non-Jewish kids never been taught about it- not in school, not at home.

That was what really drove home the importance of this project to Baird, the notion that just a couple of generations after the Shoah, when we still have survivors in our midst, there are people who don’t even know about the Holocaust, that it’s simply not being taught.

The project likely would have been ready sooner, but Covid caused major disruptions to the writing process.  From the original group of twelve kids, eight stayed on board through the years.

Because some of the original group are about to graduate high school, it was really important to them to premiere the fully staged production before they go off to college.

The process, Baird shared, was not without its challenges.  During the rehearsal process there were actors and families who questioned why things were being done the way they were, why certain words were being used, if some stories were too scary to tell, and so forth.  There was a lot of discussion about historical accuracy versus modern sensibilities.

A lot of pushback was around the idea of having security for the show.  In our Jewish spaces we are unfortunately all too used to seeing armed guards at the gates, and are even comforted by their presence, especially with the current rise in antisemitism.  Not everyone felt that way though, and some even dropped out of the show because of safety concerns.  There was some thought that having a police presence would scare some of the parents away from letting their kids participate in the show.  In the end, another compromise was made, and with help from the Jewish Federation of San Diego, they managed to have an invisible security presence.  They were there, but not at the door or in your face.

I was saddened and shocked to learn that though the kids all said that they thought it was important to learn about the Holocaust so that it will never happen again, and that they learned about the importance of listening and empathy, few of them were able to make the connection to what is happening right now to the Jewish community.  In fact, when Baird brought up the connections one of the kids said “here we go” and another said that it felt like “Zionist propaganda.”

Baird was worried that if she pushed the point some of the actors would quit the show, so she consoled herself with the knowledge that at least a baby step had been made. Kids who previously didn’t even know the Shoah had happened, at least now had some knowledge about it and the lasting horrors of it. But clearly there is still much work to be done.

The ultimate goal for Echoes is that it will not only get funding to tour schools and to be performed at conferences, but that educators will buy the script and supplementary teacher plans for a nominal fee and use them in their classrooms to teach their students about the Holocaust.  They hope that this will make it more accessible to create education and discussions around the Holocaust.

While the subject is hard, it’s so important to remember the history, especially as the first-person witnesses are aging and their stories are getting lost to time.  There also are changing ideas on what kids can handle learning about.

Baird and people closely associated with Echoes express hope it will help people learn tolerance and to listen, to want to learn more about each other and where they come from; to foster curiosity and empathy.

If you want to help support this project, either by bringing it to your school, or by donating to the cause, email Baird at kidzonstg@gmail.com

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Sandi Masori is a theater and restaurant reviewer for San Diego Jewish World