Sunday, April 23, 2006

No room at Majdanek death camp


Organizer of rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, decides that it might not be a good idea, after all, to stage it in the middle of a killing field.

The Lublin Musical Theatre group had originally planned to put on the musical in the death camp in eastern Poland to celebrate ‘universal issues in a religious context’.

Hmmm, sorry, but that just sounds like a silly idea. Andrew Lloyd-Webber, in a death camp?

And then, all of a sudden, much to the surprise of the organizers, there were protests. Lots of them. From Jewish groups.

Gosh! Isn't life unpredictable sometimes.

Mercury News reported last week that:

Piotr Kadlcik, leader of Poland's Jewish community, said he was "very happy" that the performance would not take place...

Former Israeli ambassador to Poland Shewach Weiss said on TVN24 television that [organizer] Balawejder's mistake had "been set right now and we should move forward toward reconciliation and solidarity."

Majdanek death camp, now a museum, is where a quarter of a million people were killed by the Nazis during WW II.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm, no protests from the "enlightened liberals" about the "hinderance of free speech".

Though they were enraged when a university didn't let them exhibit t-shirts with slogans, such as "I had an abortion" or "I jerk off" during a human rights film festival, that dealt, amongs others, with the genocide of the Chechens.

sonia said...

Well, I am sure the Poles wouldn't be happy if Putin allowed a representation of "Cats" in the Katyn forest...

Do unto others as...

roman said...

Who comes up with these hair-brained schemes? What part of the word "solemn" don't they understand?
Good post. I had never even heard of this camp near Lublin.

beatroot said...

Poland had loads of these places, Roman.

The ‘death camps’ were: Auschwitz, Belzec (near Ukrainian border) Chełmno (Warsaw and Poznań) Sobibór (near Belarus border) Treblinka (north-east of Warsaw) Majdanek (near Lublin).

And then there were the ‘concentration camps’: Kraków-Płaszów (made famous in Schindler's List), Sztutowo (near Gdańsk) and one in Działdowo and one in Warsaw, and then smaller ones in Budzyń, Janowska, Poniatowa, Skarżysko-Kamienna, Starachowice, Trawniki.

In fact, no shortage of places to put on rock musicals!

Anonymous said...

It was certainly interesting for me to read that article. Thanx for it. I like such themes and everything connected to this matter. I would like to read more on that blog soon.