REal and unreal-- Holocaust monologues

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.   The Nazi guard tells me I should do this or I will die. I cannot believe what I see, bodies piled on top of each other like pieces of clay. The smell of carbon monoxide still hovering over them, still oozing out of their open mouths with their last breaths. I am so hungry I could gnaw off my own arm. I have already seen others die, who have eaten more than I have. Some from my synagogue hate me for what I am doing. But what choice do I have? In this world swimming with death, I must do all I can to keep alive. The Nazi guard assures me he will protect me if I do what I am told. I have no desire to becoming one of those I saw, bones stretched tight with flesh over which even th...

  I hear it even in my sleep, the clink, clink, clink of what does not quite sound like falling bits of metal. I work in a room full of shoes, and wonder after so many days why so many people feel like they do not need them. The clink, clink, clink bothers me, rising and falling from a room beyond mine. I have tried to look in there a few times but rough hands haul me back. I do not know anyone who actually works in that room only people who work in rooms like mine, collecting items that people no longer seem to need, like hats and shirts and ties and pants. And those who work in those rooms also hear these clinks and also wonder what it is that sounds like metal but is not. We all try to picture articles of collected clothing that would make such a sound, and how much of this there must be to go on and on like it does. Clink, clink, clink. Even in my dreams.   Published Because some professional actors said they could not use the work unless they were published; I have finall...

    I don’t now what to tell you. But this is not a good place to be right now. Not for Jews anyway. I’m scared for both of us Especially with everything thing they’ve taken from us already But I’ve heard talk about worse things. Camps and ghettos out east. Maybe it’s just talk. Maybe they’re just trying to scare people like us, Communists, Jews, gypsies and such. Well, it’s worked, I’m scared. I know your people have been through things like this before and survived. But this is different. I feel it in my bones. We need to get out while we still can. Where? I thought about that and since America won’t take us and Palestine is closed, I’ve managed to get us two tickets to England. I had to get someone to promise me a job first, and in these times, that was tough, but I did it. We have to go now before it’s too late. I know you don’t want to go without your parents. I don’t want to leave mine behind either. But we only have two tickets and if we don’t take them, we’ll get stuck...

  Is it hot or cold this thing they want me to breathe? I remember how warm I felt in the shop I kept before they came to tell me to leave. I have not felt so warm since though I have felt frightened. You can' t warm your fingers over a pot full of hope the way you can over one of burning coals. You can't taste, smell or touch hope, and so, it lingers on the tip of tongue or finger or nose, illusive and deceptive when all you ache for is something real. So when I breathe this, will I taste or smell it? Will I feel some warm glow inside my chest? Sometimes, I ache to rush the wire just to be able to feel the penetration of bullets or blade, something solid against my flesh. But this thing they want to make us breath feel as evasive as hope, a tease, a deception, a sneak thief through the back door to eternity when I need to have it hit me full in the face. Is it hot or cold, this thing they want me to breathe?   Published Because some professional actors said they could not use...

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.   I am a shoemaker, but not so good a shoemaker as my father was, or his father before him. I learned from my father’s hand, yet have only a dim memory of him from those hazy times in the old country when he ran a small shop near Berlin. My father was a good shoe maker, not a wealthy one. Since he was a Jew he mostly sold to other Jews, and in Germany in those days, few Jews had wealth to spare. None the less my father earned a living, as well as the enmity of Hans, the German shoemaker who hoped not only to sell his shoes to Germans but to us Jews, too. Hans hated my father long before any of us heard about the Nazis or understood fully who and what they were. I think now Hans ...

  I used to love trains. Everybody said so. They called me the Jew kid they always saw sitting by the Krakow train yards watching the trains come and go. I went there whenever I could, sneaking out of school whenever could, always scolded later by momma when I got back to the schule. I loved the way the wheels moved, show at first, like some great beast gathering strength before a leap, the chug, chug, chug of the coal-burning steam engine and wheels struggling to drag away the rest of the train. I even loved the way the black soot settled over me, filled with sparks I always saw as eyes, living beings staring out at me from some unimaginable darkness. I breathed deep air scented in coal and grease, a smell poppa hated because we had to breathe it in all day, living as close to the tracks as we did. When I was very young I sat at the tracks side and dreamed of all the places those trains might take me, counting down the months, hours, weeks and days to when I would be old...

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.     1 -- It is not my fault   It is not my fault. I am not like my momma or poppa who wanted nothing to stay in the shtetl, seeing no one, speaking to no one other than our own. They wanted no more than what they had, to go to temple, to recite and to go home again, needing no other path but the one our ancestors paved for them between birth and god. I like being in the world, to walk down a busy street filled with children and traffic, to wave and smile at people I know and have them wave and smile back at me. I like to think I am part of something larger than my religion, mean something to the place where I grew up and live, and have the respect of Goyim and Gentile....