Sheds Light on the Complexity of Holocaust Trauma on Subsequent Generations of a Jewish Family
“The Berlin Diaries.” (Photo credit: Ryan Maxwell Photography)
All families are complicated, to paraphrase the overused Tolstoy quote. Jewish families — who have survived millennia of Jew hatred, exile, emigration and displacement, culminating in the Holocaust — have borne and passed on generational trauma. In fact, in a decade-old study of a cohort of Holocaust survivors, geneticists found epigenetic changes in DNA were passed on to the next generation, affecting the second and third generations with high stress responses, anxiety and depression.
Playwright Andrea Stolowitz, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, grew up believing her family stories. They were lucky: everyone survived and “got out.” But when she received a copy of her great-grandfather’s Holocaust-era diary, penned in Berlin, like a detective, she embarks on a search to connect the pieces of a family scattered and lost by the events of the Nazi regime.
The resulting “The Berlin Diaries,” a Washington, D.C., regional premiere on stage at Theater J’s Goldman Theater through June 22, wrestles with what has become familiar fodder on the Holocaust play circuit. Eighty years after the Shoah, as the last generation of survivors bearing witness passes away, “The Berlin Diaries” sheds light on this monumental moment for the Jewish people — and the world — from a different point of view.
Stolowitz, of course, is neither a survivor nor a child of survivors. She’s what has become known as a 3G — third-generation survivor — the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, who grew up with, perhaps, stories but no direct experiences, though that epigenetic trauma gene could be present.
This theatricalized drama recounts the playwright’s close reading of her great-grandfather’s handwritten diaries and her quest to turn this uncovered and untold family history into a theater piece. The work has been intriguingly structured with 14 characters, ranging from the playwright to Max, the diarist, to an uncle, a bureaucrat, and others who fill out the action. Two fine actors — Theater J stalwart Lawrence Redmond and Dina Thomas — fill all these varied parts interchangeably. That means at some points Redmond performs in the guise of Max Cohnreich, and a few lines later Thomas takes over. This intriguing doubling of the characters at various phases in their lives provides a surprisingly cogent testimony of Berlin Jewish life during the rise of Adolf Hitler and contemporary life in Berlin and beyond.
This post-modern approach to character study serves as a metaphorical mirror reflecting history across decades and countries. At one moment it’s 1939 Berlin; the next it’s 2018, same city, but distinctly different context — at a conference of 3G members. And, both Redmond and Thomas — clad in generic, genderless slacks, collared shirts and forest green cardigans — also take on the self-reflective role of Andrea, the playwright, who at one point during the 90-minute drama says, presciently, “I’m staring across time.” Redmond and Thomas finesse the multiplicity of roles and exchanges with seamless skill on Sarah Beth Hall’s stunner of a set, filled with a wall of drawers and binders representing an archive of the countless lives lost in the Holocaust whose stories will never be fully told. Director Elizabeth Dinkova has drawn out moving, well-honed performances from Thomas and Redmond that should be seen.
Moments of humor pepper the characters in the script, including hyper-efficient German clerks, Max’s ridiculous ode to a cousin’s hemorrhoid procedure, a New York Yankees-loving uncle, and a (typical) overbearing Jewish mother. But a 3G Holocaust play is filled especially with ghosts of survivors the third generation never met and those whose stories have been lost to time and untold histories. These include the ghosts Stolowitz seeks and the ones she never knew existed — those lost to hidden family stories, ancient rifts that separated successive generations.
All families, especially Jewish ones, have complicated histories filled with hope and loss, tragedy and trauma, faded memories, and, if they’re lucky, recovered letters, diaries, photographs and generational stories that can be used to fill in the missing links in ancestral family trees.
But retracing the paper trail, which Stolowitz depicts in “The Berlin Diaries,” merely recovered facts that illuminated just a sliver of a family drama. What has been missed are fleshed out stories of lost ancestors’ lives, loves, losses, rich with memories of laughter and tears, tightly knit connections and those that have been broken. At a moment when antisemitism has risen precipitously, both in the U.S. and around the world, a new approach to examining the Holocaust that isn’t a retread of the 20th-century approach from “The Diary of Anne Frank” or Arthur Miller’s “Playing for Time,” which examine the victims’ experiences, this play deals with the Holocaust for 21st-century audiences.
“All happy families are alike,” Tolstoy famously wrote, “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Stolowitz — the playwright and the character — understood her own small family with its story of survival on a simple, singular level. It took a deep dive to uncover the tragedy of a messy, unhappy family legacy.
“The Berlin Diaries” by Andrea Stolowitz at Theater J of the Edlavitch DCJCC, 1529 16th St. NW, Washington, D.C., runs through June 29, 2025. Tickets from $69.99. Visit edcjcc.org/theater-j/show/the-berlin-diaries or call 202-777-3210.
Lisa Traiger is Washington Jewish Week’s arts correspondent.
