8.02.2023
From a real story to a spectacular performance. Writer Hadar Galron began work on the play “My mother is the secretary of the Angel of Death” at the request of her friend Yakov Buchan. He turned to a playwright because he wanted his personal story to be theatrical. His mother was the secretary of Josef Mengele, a doctor who, in Auschwitz, conducted brutal experiments on concentration camp prisoners for several years, including her. Hadar Galron immediately set about writing the play. She literally suffered the story of Yakov Buchan. The play was translated into Russian from Hebrew by Tatyana Sobol. The woman met at the Israeli Drama Institute.
Khadar Galron and Tatyana Sobol, author of the play and author of the Russian translation
When you undertake to write a play, she already speaks like an experienced playwright, you can’t just take it and say “here, I’ll take it and write it”, nothing will work, she will be dead. It must be a topic that will excite you, the same thing in acting, they pass everything through themselves. So, of course, she passed all this through herself.
The play acquired its theatrical appearance thanks to the Moscow director Vyacheslav Tereshchenko and the Vladimir theater. This is how the monodrama performed by Anna Luzgina turned out. Work on it began in the summer of 2022. Preparation lasted almost six months with breaks on tour. A lot of non-fiction was read, films were watched, music was listened to in order to immerse in the material.
Vyacheslav Tereshchenko, director of the play
In the rehearsal process, we tested this through ourselves, this story, how organically it flows. Since a big story consists of small short stories. And you need to understand the score, as they say in music. The translation in this sense was very remarkable, it is wonderful.
The performance, like the play, tells about the fate of the child of concentration camp prisoners from the female side. In the center of the production is the story of TAmi. Her father disposed of the corpses in Auschwitz, and her mother, like the mother of Yakov Buchan, was the personal secretary of Dr. Josef Mengele. The horrors of Auschwitz were forever imprinted in her memory, and she conveyed them to her daughter in the form of scary tales and creepy stories. Despite the terrible past of her parents, of which they made her the heiress, Tami tries to find her own, female happiness throughout the performance.
“Tami, what are you doing!” He’s your teacher, stay away from him! Mom, but he’s one of ours. We also had ours in the camp! These bastards were worse than strangers!
An hour-long story about a girl who became a hostage to her parents’ fears has a happy ending. The audience accepted the performance with a bang. The guest of honor of the show, Minister Plenipotentiary and Deputy Ambassador of Israel Ronen Kraus, could not remain indifferent either.
Ronen Kraus, Minister Plenipotentiary of Israel, Deputy Ambassador of Israel
For me, it was a very emotional performance, because it is the story of my father, who was liberated by the Red Army in Vienna, and the story of grandparents on my mother’s side, they went through Auschwitz and other camps. This is a story that lives in my family, and today I saw it on stage. And the emotions that the actress played on stage remind me of those that I saw at home.
The production “My mother is the secretary of the Angel of Death” is about each such child whose parents were prisoners of concentration camps. Thanks to her, the viewer can feel their emotions, understand how they live today. So that people remember those terrible events, and they will never happen again.
Lada Kochetova, Alexey Kandalov.
Credit: https://https://variant33.ru/enews/priehala_aktrisa_idramaturg_hadar_galron