There is no drama around him. He
is a dead young man in uniform walking slowly, limply through three acts.
This is all one remembers--that his eyes were open and unseeing, that his
arms hung like a scarecrow's and that the fingers of his hands were curled
in and motionless.
* * * * *
They talk to him in the play. The scene is a Jewish village in Poland. The
war has ended. Famine, disease and poverty remain. Refugees, dying ones,
starving ones, huddle together in the dismantled synagogue. No one knows
what has happened. The armies have passed. Flame and blood brightened the
sky for a time. Now the little village lies cut off from the world and its
people clutch desperately to the hem of life. No news has come. Wanderers
stagger down the torn roads with crazy tidings and the old men of the
synagogue sit shivering over their prayer books. A world has been blown
into fragments and this scene is one of the fragments.
Sholom Ash, who wrote this play, spent a time in villages abroad as a
Jewish relief worker and he brought back this scene. A bedlam of despair,
a merciless photograph that stares across the footlights for a half-hour.
The story begins. There is a village leader in whose veins the will to
live still throbs.
Pages:
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301