I am in Prague. Tomorrow, we are going to lay Stolpersteine

http://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/home/ in front of the house in Prague where my family lived before they were deported by the Nazis to a concentration camp.

There will be the 5^th generation there, my grandchildren.

I will blog about that, of course, but I’d like to talk about a play I saw in London the evening before the flight to Prague.

It was Leopoldstadt by my favourite playwright Tom Stoppard.

Tom Stoppard is like me originally a Jewish Czech. The play is about a Jewish Viennese family .It was wonderful and moving. I don’t cry in theatres I did that time.

https://www.thearticle.com/leopoldstadt-tom-stoppards-last-play-but-his-first-tragedy-is-a-triumph

And I am thinking about the fact that it took Tom Stoppard, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Singapore with his parents in 1939 many years before he wrote a play about the Jewish question and the Holocaust.

I couldn’t possibly compare myself to a genius like Mr. Stoppard, but I also only started thinking about my Jewish family past when I was older.-63,

Then gradually it became very important, and I  just had to write my novel “ Why Didn’t They Leave?”

It is as if the memories of my family had to mature, grow in my mind.

So if you hear people say: It was a long time ago!” talking about Holocaust or slavery in America, think about it. Sometimes digesting horrible past and dealing with it takes a long time.

Maybe the more traumatic the situation is, the longer it takes.

If you can, go and see the play, it is fantastic.

I am in Prague. Tomorrow, we are going to lay Stolpersteine

http://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/home/ in front of the house in Prague where my family lived before they were deported by the Nazis to a concentration camp.

There will be the 5^th generation there, my grandchildren.

I will blog about that, of course, but I’d like to talk about a play I saw in London the evening before the flight to Prague.

It was Leopoldstadt by my favourite playwright Tom Stoppard.

Tom Stoppard is like me originally a Jewish Czech. The play is about a Jewish Viennese family .It was wonderful and moving. I don’t cry in theatres I did that time.

https://www.thearticle.com/leopoldstadt-tom-stoppards-last-play-but-his-first-tragedy-is-a-triumph

And I am thinking about the fact that it took Tom Stoppard, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Singapore with his parents in 1939 so many years before he wrote a play about the Jewish question and the Holocaust.

I couldn’t possibly compare myself to a genius like Mr. Stoppard, but I also only started thinking about my Jewish family past when I was older.-63,

Then gradually it became very important, and I  just had to write my novel “ Why Didn’t They Leave?”

It is as if the memories of my family had to mature, grow in my mind.

So if you hear people say: It was a long time ago!” talking about Holocaust or slavery in America, think about it. Sometimes digesting horrible past and dealing with it takes a long time.

Maybe the more traumatic the situation is, the longer it takes.

If you can, go and see the play, it is fantastic.