Response to Playing For Time

It's 7:44am, it's my second coffee of the day and I'm sitting on a train heading back to my hometown/homeplace/place-of-home(?) that is the Wirral: a glorious, coastal, soul-sucking vacuum; where returning always feels like shrugging on an old, itchy, Wooly jumper (pun intended) that I've outgrown: a geographical clique whose tedious secrets I was never let in on and spat me out a long time ago.
At this point in my life, I think I'd rather have a job sniffing farts and scoring them out of ten than live in place where one might go to vegetate in a retirement home with a salty, sea view, or buy a house with a mortgage that screams future divorce and succeeding mid-life crisis. Don't worry, I'm not as bitter as you might think and I actually had an amazing childhood and still have a circle of friends on the Wirral, but caffeine has quickened my typing thumbs and sharpened my reckless tongue.


But. What if. What if. What if.


Let's rewind to 1935. What if I were Jewish (and a Jewish woman at that), student, travelling on a train, writing something outspoken to a public medium and living in Germany. Maybe at the next stop, SS guards would have spotted a yellow Star of David on my jacket breast and hauled me off the train; like real-life embodiments of the hounds of hell who burned my words and tried to scour the innards of my brain with bleach.

Would I have been able to return home to my parents in 1935, just 80 years ago?

I am thankful that I am fortunate enough to live in a country with freedom of speech and freewill, and although I am not religious, I would be free to belong to a religion without dictatorial persecution. One lady, whose rights such as these were snatched away by the Nazi regime, was Fania Fénelon.

Fania Fénelon was a French musician, composer and cabaret singer who was living in Nazi-occupied Paris at the time of her arrest. She was half-Jewish, supported the French Resistance and throughout the duration of her incarceration in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Fania kept a diary of her life inside the notorious, working camp.

Her memoirs were documented in the form of a play, by Arthur Miller - Playing For Time.

I blogged about wanting to see the play earlier in the year and indeed, I went to Sheffield to see the play at the Crucible a few weeks ago with my German friend, Clara. I often find it hard to talk to Clara about the Holocaust, although she has always been open when asked questions on Vergangenheitsbewältigung (as 'vlogged', back in Feb). We were both very emotional when watching PFT, and especially stunned at Siân Phillips' searing performance.

You can watch the trailer here, but really, I implore you to go and see this play for the finale performance tonight, at the Crucible theatre. Take tissues.