NEW YORK – A performance of “The Good and the True,” a play based on the life of two Czech Holocaust survivors, brought tears to the eyes of Petr Papousek, the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic and a World Jewish Congress Vice-President.
The play, whose New York opening Papousek attended yesterday, is based on the life of Papousek’s grandfather Milos Dobry and that of another Czech Jew, Hanna Pravda, both survivors of Terezin and Auschwitz.
“The Holocaust is becoming history as the survivors are passing away,” Papousek said Thursday during a luncheon meeting at World Jewish Congress headquarters. “Such events [as this play] are so important for preserving Shoah memory.”
A two-character drama, “The Good and the True” was created out of the Shoah testimony of Dobry, an athlete and engineer, and Pravda, an actress, who were young adults at the time of Nazi persecutions. In Czech, “Dobry” means “good” while “Pravda” means true, giving rise to the play’s title. Taking place on a dimly lit stage with few props, bordered with barbed wire, the gripping drama consists of alternating monologues that relive the Holocaust’s trials through the eyes of the characters. Both Dobry and Pravda came from non-religious Prague families, but they did not know each other, nor did they meet during their parallel ordeals.
“The intertwined monologues don’t enhance or refract each other as much as you might wish, but they’re both compelling,” the New York Times wrote in its review. “Specifics give the story its power and its horror: the size of the boots that pinch Milos’s feet so badly that his toes start to fester, the frozen cabbages that Hana and other prisoners fight over during a forced march, the tulip bulbs that Milos eats, having mistaken them for onions.”
In an interesting twist, the role of Hanna Pravda is being acted by Pravda’s real-life granddaughter, Isobel Pravda, who originated the part in the United Kingdom. Milos Dobry is played by veteran actor Saul Reichlin.
The play is being staged at Off-Broadway's DR2 Theatre, near Union Square, and will conclude its engagement Sept. 14. Its production has the support of the City of Prague, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Czech Centre in New York, Czech Mission to the United Nations in New York, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rakovsky & Partners, the World Jewish Congress and New End Theatre Beyond in London.
Papousek described Jewish life in the Czech Republic as vibrant in cities such as Prague and Brno but dying in smaller communities where only a few survivors are left. “The small communities are in bad shape,” he said.
He said the Czech Republic has been spared the violent anti-Jewish agitation being seen in other European countries in response to Israel’s Gaza incursion.
The Czech Ambassador to the United States, Petr Gandalovic, wrote to WJC President Ronald Lauder recently to show his solidarity and support for Israel. “Let me underline that the Czech Republic condemns indiscriminate shelling of Israel from the Gaza Strip in the strongest possible terms and calls for the renunciation of violence by Hamas and other militant groups,” he wrote. “While we deplore the loss of civilian lives, we condemn abuse of Gaza’s population as human shields…”
Besides his stewardship of the Federation, Papousek has served the Czech Jewish community as a board member of the European Council of Jewish Communities and the European Shoah Legacy Institute, and on the International Task Force for Holocaust Education, Research and Remembrance. He has a graduate degree in macro-economics from the Technical University in Ostrava, and studied foreign policy and the economics of the Middle East at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
