Harlem Students Learn About the Holocaust Through Theater
HARLEM — More than 650 Harlem students will attend a play this week about a young Jewish girl’s escape from Nazi Germany before the outbreak of World War II.
The students will be in the audience for Thursday’s performance of the play “My Heart In a Suitcase” at the Schomburg Center at 515 Malcolm X Blvd.
The drama, based on a true story, follows the life of a 12-year-old girl, Anne Lehmann, who left her family in 1938 aboard a ship bringing children to England during the Nazis’ rise to power.
The so-called Kindertransports carried 10,000 children from Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria to England in the lead up to World War II. Many of the children ended up living in English foster homes while their families perished in the Holocaust.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car and ArtsPower, a traveling theater group that produces plays based on classic literature and historical events, organized the event.
By Ben Fractenberg
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer