November 9, 2009 will mark 71 years since the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht signaled the public beginning of the dark years to come for Jews across Europe.
As synagogues burned and the windows of Jewish-owned shops were smashed across Germany that night, one could barely imagine that within less than seven years, 6 million Jews would vanish from the continent.
This year, Congregation Beth Shalom and the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center will mark the date with a dramatic reading from Katherine Kressmann Taylor’s Address Unknown.
Kressman’s book was written as a collection of letters between two German émigré art dealers who had been partners in San Francisco. One, Max, was Jewish; the other, Martin, was gentile.
Martin returns to Germany as the Nazis come to power. He is enamored of what they have done to turn the country around after its ruinous defeat in World War I.
Max, meanwhile, has heard from others that life for the Jews in Germany is becoming more dangerous by the day.
When his sister disappears, Max writes Martin to ask for help in locating her. He eventually tells Max she is dead — and that he turned her away when she came to him for help. Martin asks Max to stop writing him, as he feels the letters could make trouble for him.
With that, Max takes his revenge with letters doing just that, ending with one returned and stamped “address unknown.”
The letter is actually stamped “Adressat unbekannt” or addressee unknown, but Taylor apparently misinterpreted the German or changed the translation for English-speaking readers.
Kressman’s book was first published in 1938 and made into a film in 1944. It was first adapted for the stage and first performed in 2001. The play has been staged around the world in the intervening years.
In 1995, when Portland-born Kressman was 91, the book was reissued and translated into more than 20 languages. The book finally appeared in Germany in 2001. It had been banned by the Nazis when it was originally published.
According to Carol Benedick, programming and adult education director at Congregation Beth Shalom, the reading is emotionally powerful.
“I saw it in Israel a couple of years ago and was amazed by it,” she said. “I was surprised by the way it made me feel. I knew it was something I wanted our community to see.”
Benedick says that she expects that some survivors of Kristallnacht will attend the November 9 reading as well as children and grandchildren of those who lived through the horror of that night and the Holocaust that followed.
Benedick said this performance contains strong enough material to make it likely inappropriate for those under about the age of 10.
The reading at Beth Shalom will be performed by Brian Rapalee and Anthony Moore and directed by Rebecca Osman Polyakovsky.