The broad lawns of Sonoma State are a long way from war-torn Berlin, but through the magic of theater, that gap will soon close, if only for a day.
In honor of Holocaust victims and survivors, a new one-act play called “U-boats in Berlin” will make its world premiere at the Yom HaShoah Community Commemoration on campus on Sunday, May 8.
The play recounts the true story of the Arndts, a Jewish family hiding in the Nazi capital while a circle of Righteous Gentiles protected them until the end of the war. For nearly three years, the family shifted from safe house to safe house, eluding capture and beating the odds.
Santa Rosa-based playwright Susanne Batzdorff, 83, has a personal stake in her latest opus. She is a German-born Jew who fled to the United States with her family in 1939, a few months after Kristallnacht. Her friend Ruth Gumpel, who lives in Petaluma, was a member of the Arndt family and is depicted in Batzdorff’s play.
“This is the story of a lucky family,” says Batzdorff. “The play is a distillation, a series of short scenes from their experiences, to show what they went through.”
With a cast of six, directed by noted Marin director-theater professor Brian Newberg, most of those scenes are inherently powerful. In one, a Jewish character fed up with the seclusion decides to risk all by going to eat at a Berlin restaurant. There she meets a German military officer with whom she engages in conversation. It’s a stunningly casual encounter between mortal enemies.
In another scene, family members sneak out to attend the opera, once again defying those who would rob them of their humanity.
“There are other stories like this,” notes Batzdorff. “Stories of Jews in hiding during the war. Half were betrayed and found, arrested and deported, but others made it.”
The Arndt family was the subject of the book “Survival in the Shadows” by Barbara Lovenheim. The author is expected to attend the May 8 performance.
So will Ruth Gumpel. Over the years, both she and Batzdorff spent countless hours telling their stories and doing what they could to educate younger generations about the Holocaust.
Born in Breslau, Germany (now part of Poland), Batzdorff grew up in a liberal, culturally rich Jewish household. As Nazi persecution of German Jews increased, her family fled. All survived, but their extended family was wiped out in the Holocaust. (Her aunt was Edith Stein, the famed Catholic convert who became a nun and was eventually murdered in Auschwitz.)
Batzdorff’s family settled in Brooklyn. She later went to Brooklyn College and Columbia University, earning a master’s in English and launching a career as a librarian. She and her husband, a survivor of the Kindertransport, moved to Philadelphia, where they lived for many years. Batzdorff worked in college and medical libraries, ultimately relocating to Northern California after retirement in 1982 to be near her children.
All along, she was writing about her own experience and visiting classrooms to offer her testimony. “I’ve written dramatic readings before,” she says. “One was about Kristallnacht, another about Jews who resisted.”
In addition to the play, the commemoration will include the lighting of memorial candles by six survivors of the Shoah.
That will be moving enough. But amateur dramatist though she is, Batzdorff has a kicker of an ending for her play, one that should leave no dry eyes in the house.
“At the end, there’s a scene where the Russians have come to liberate Berlin,” she says. “They ask the Arndt family to say something in Hebrew to prove they are Jews.”
She adds: “They say the Sh’ma.”
“U-boats in Berlin” will play 2 p.m. Sunday, May 8, as part of the Yom HaShoah Community Commemoration at the Cooperage, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park. Admission is free.