Drawing on material from Yaffa Eliach's book, Hasidic Tales of The Holocaust,
the play uses some of these moving stories to relate the experiences of
individuals, many of them young people, during the Shoah. The play
examines some of the mechanisms of the Final Solution and tell of the
hatred and prejudice that fueled this unthinkable event.
Among
the stories told in the play is that of a young woman, Anna, who was
dying of typhus. After crawling to the top of a hill, her father comes
to her and tells her to hold out for a couple more days for then the
camp will be liberated. Afer the camp's liberation, Anna discovers her
father had been dead for several months, and that the hill she had
climbed was a mass grave where he was buried.
There
are also the stories of Moshe, a young boy, who saves himself from
freezing to death by dancing like an Hasid during a roll call, and that
of Margaret who experiences an act of unexpected and almost unbelievable
kindness from a German soldier.
Magda and Josef is
the true story of a young woman who risked her life to do the right
thing when so many ofhters were turning their heads and pretending not
to see what was going on around them. Set during the time of The
Holocaust, Magda, a young non-Jewish woman, undertakes a perilous
journey to secure a document that will help to save the life of the
Jewish man she loves. Her story is the answer to anyone who has ever
said: "What could I have done, I was just an ordinary person."