Not Your Ordinary Shoah Article:

How Creative Writing Strengthened My Connection to the Holocaust

By Alicia Cohen
Occidental College

Last fall I was faced with the enormous task of writing a play. The one thing that I was sure of was that I wanted my play to be centered around Judaism. While I was searching for exactly what to write about, I realized that if I wrote a contemporary piece I would end up writing about myself and experiences that I have had, which was not at all what I wanted. My next thought was to set my play during the Shoah and to use the stories that I have read and heard – the ones that have stuck with me for years – to color my characters' own stories.

The process of writing did not come easily for me, but I feel that some of that difficulty was the pain I experienced each time I dove into the writing, especially with the central characters of Rivka and Leah. I don't know that there is any way to write other than to "become one" with the character – to have the same thought process, experience, feelings and history as the character. I found that, with the help of my imagination, I was able to jump into the minds of Rivka and Leah. As beautiful as this process was, and continues to be, I found it difficult to be excited to go into that place of fear, wonder and hiding.

In the play, currently titled "Open," Leah grabs Rivka as they are being unloaded from a cattle car and into a concentration camp. In the confusion, the two are able to escape from the camp and the play follows them as they struggle to hide, survive, and co-exist in the fields of Western Germany.

The characters Rivka and Leah are entirely fictional. I based elements of each girl on ideas that I find contradictory within myself and created a story – their story – based on so many others that I have read and heard. The character Kokomo, however – another person in the play– is not quite as fictional.

We hear the stories of survivors of the Shoah, and think of them all as those who were citizens of Europe and had their homes and lives devastated, but these are not our only survivors. In addition to these millions there are the Jewish soldiers from other countries, including America, who fought the war. My grandfather is one of these survivors. During WWII, Zaidi was part of the US Army and was captured by German soldiers. Miraculously, his captors never found out that he was Jewish. During the time that Zaidi spent as a prisoner, he was held in a WWI Cavalry stable turned prison hospital and, because he was a medic, was forced to act as a surgeon for the other prisoners.

Zaidi also found himself as part of the French and German undergrounds – periodically he would be taken in the middle of the night to a farmhouse across a field from the prison hospital where he would listen to the radio and take messages back with him. As I have heard more of Zaidi's story, I have learned about Pol and Zaig, a French couple that he met while crossing the fields. I saw a similarity between Pol and Zaig, and the characters Rivka and Leah living in their fields. I chose the name Kokomo for the American soldier, because that was the code name that Zaidi was given for the underground, and I brought my fictitious Kokomo into the lives of Rivka and Leah.

In the process of writing Open I found a different way to look at the Shoah. Rather then reading books, or watching documentaries, or listening to survivors share their stories, I was able to live the story of Rivka, Leah, and Kokomo for myself. I never set out to be incredibly historically accurate – simply to find a way that I could create a story to share with others.

For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by stories of the Shoah. As I have reread some of these books over the past several months, I have found different ways that they affect me at this stage in my journey. I believe that these books and stories not only enabled me to write this play, but were also the reason that I wrote it. I was able to understand on a much more personal level what so many of our people suffered through because I was able to put myself in their position, if only for a brief moment inside my head. I have always felt that I had a strong connection to the Shoah; now I feel that this connection has been strengthened and enhanced in a way that few will ever experience – my hope is that I can go on and share this with others.

[Posted 3/27/03]