by Vivian Henoch
On Monday, April 8, at 6:30 pm, in commemoration of Yom HaShoah 2013, six Holocaust survivors were joined by six high school students for an extraordinary one-time theatrical event staged at the Jewish Community Center’s Berman Center for the Performing Arts in West Bloomfield.
“Stunning.”
“Therapeutic.”
“True to life.”
“Courageous.”
These are words that only begin to describe what the community saw. The program, entitled We Are Here: The Journey from Harmony to Horror to Hope, was a production of the Witness Theater, an innovative project where Holocaust survivors and high school students participate in a series of intensive workshops to explore their collective stories and to collaborate on a single public performance. With the generous support of the Nora and Guy Barron Jewish Life Millennium Fund, the project was brought to the community by the Jewish Federation’s Alliance for Jewish Education in partnership with Jewish Senior Life.
