REal and unreal-- Holocaust monologues

  Email to Al Sullivan   Who puts crosses up in concentration camps, Rattling the bones of the Jewish dead? Good Christians putting their stamp On the ghosts of souls they have never met. Nun rub magic beads over the ashy ruins Where civilization had its finest hour Like Shakespeare’s witches predicting doom Upon people graced with God’s golden shower. Whose bloody hands do we willingly shake? Whose rotting heart do we so admire? In whose oven does our bread bake? How hot must we make the fire? Doing nothing for years I only looked Ignoring the cries I knew must be pain I pretended that I never understood, Then cried as loud when my turn came. How inhumane we humans can sometimes be, Casting stones at the weak and most needy, We who are special and criminally free, Force our brothers to believe what we believe. Who put the crosses on concentration camps? We do, and we hang people on them, too.   holocaust menu email to Al Sullivan

He has a nice face, and kind eyes, and very soft hands. So I don't understand how hands so soft can cause so much pain? He wakes us each morning and tells us how unworthy we are, striding up our lines to look closely at each of us for something none of us can see. If we could see it, we might change it before he sees it, we think a flaw in our faces or a look in our eyes he does not like. Sometimes, he even smiles before he frowns as if to tell this person or that all will be well when it won't be. We all know this person or that person in this line we stand in must die today. After so many times, we know someone must die, we just don't know who. And we understand we die because he wants us to die, and it is up to him to decide which one of us he wants on which particular day. So when he wakes us up each of us wonders which one of us his kind eyes and soft hands will kill next, and how many days it will take him to kill us all, and if in the end, which ones of us are really...

    I know Pa As the train I’m on reaches St. Louis, he’s still on the front porch in his rocking chair with the rest of my folks on either side, staring down the dirt road I dove off on, thinking I’ll be coming back. First born girls like me ought not to leave home unless we’re married, and even then no so far as Flatville let alone heading to New York like me. My kin – like most kin in those hills n—figure family ought to stick close, not go wandering off where nobody knows them or cares to. More than once Pa’s told me to quick acting so uppity, like I’m such a superior being when I’m of the same flesh and bone as he and Ma, and my siblings. He doesn’t want to hear that I got a mind of my own, and dream of making myself over into something other than what he and ma have become. I look at ma and shudder, knowing she isn’t half as old as she looks, and how she’ll die long before she has a right to because of the life pa makes us leave. She works harder than any slave ever did,...

  I make up a face for the Jew in my head, whose hair makes up my bed and my socks. I know it is more than one Jew, but I ache for a face to comfort me. It is so cold here under the Atlantic, American or British ships constantly on the prowl in their search for us. We slither silently along the bottom. I am always scared and cold and lonely. Even a Jew's face is better than no face at all. This is something I know none of the others trapped inside this hull understand. They tell me to love the fatherland. They tell me I must hate Jews or gypsies or Soviets or any others listed on the list of enemies the Fuehrer issues. But how do I hate the man or woman who keeps me warm? The Americans have a saying about walking in another man's shoes, and here I walk in their socks and sleep on their heads. How can I hate them? How can I not wonder about them? Was this a good man? Did he raise good sons? Sometimes in my dreams I call out names I have never heard in waking, Jews names, dead n...

Published Because some professional actors said they could not use the work unless they were published; I have finally published these monologues and others -- and these are available at Amazon.com. This collection includes other material not originally available on this site -- slightly over 40 monologues.   My landlord is convinced I am a Jew. No matter how much I study being Christian, something small always trips me up. I need to leave Germany, but Christian guards are savvy to every trick, grilling people like me to make certain we really are the Christians we say we are. Each time I think I am ready to take that test, I panic. I pray for guidance, not as a Christian, nor even as a Jews, but at a desperate girl, having faith that God didn’t mean for any of this to happen and that he will eventually help save me. I am luckier than most in that I look German. On the street people nod at me as if I was one of their own. This has kept my landlord in doubt. He fears that I might re...

  The problem is in my blood. I was born with it. It keeps surging through my veins making them hate me for it. Somehow, it makes me inferior to them like some disease for which there is no cure. But they are always trying to find a cure anyway. We wear stars on our chests or backs We see notices of doom on our doors. We go to ghettos to keep from spreading what we have to people who cannot catch it. They try to starve it out of us, work it out of us, beat it out of us, when they know like we know it is something in our blood. So they spill that, too, herding into this place where we might be kept safe from hurting anyone, stealing away the weakest of us so as to leave the rest of us for work. And still that is not enough, sweat and tears unable to rid us of this thing that stirs in our blood. And I think as I take this razor. If I let out all the bad blood will they finally let me live?     Published Because some professional actors said they could not use the work unles...