Recommended Play: The Accomplices
By Tom Teicholz at 30 July, 2008, 11:25 am
“The Accomplices” is Bernard Weinraub’s play about Peter Bergson, born Hillel Kook, a Jewish activist who came to the US to raise funds during World War Two, at first for a Jewish Army to fight against the Nazis and then once the US joined the war for an Emergency Rescue of the Jews of Europe. The play details his efforts to do so and the resistance he met from Jewish Groups, Jewish leaders, most notably Rabbi Stephen Wise and The State Department and the support he received from non-Jewish politicians and from Ben Hecht and how he eventually met with Morgenthau and FDR to press his case.
Weinraub was a former New York Times correspondent who left the paper several years ago. Six years ago he took a playwriting class at UCLA from Simon Levy — he began on The Accomplices — the title is a reference to being accomplices to the murder of the Jews - and it with some satisfaction that the play is now being presented at the Fountain theater in Los Angeles at which Levy is associated after runs in New York and many, many workshops.
I found the production excellent, with the stage set and lighting very effective. The perormances were also very strong.– apparently the casting and the play itself have undergone some changes since New York and those who have seen both, say this is the best staging of the play. I liked it a lot.
I also have to confess that I didn’t know Begson’s story. I had heard about the rally Hecht organized and had read about Hecht’s calls for rescue but knew nothing of Bergson’s involvement.
The play ends with a short epilogue about Bergson’s life in Israel where he was one of the first Knesset members. But there is an interesting story in Begon’s life after — Bergson, much like Oskar Schindler, found his calling in the moment of darkness, but afterwards both men found it difficult to find their way in the word afterwards.
y, Michael German, Dennis Gersten,
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