Simple lessons on life

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Chinese actors read the script of Ghetto in Beijing when the Israeli director Joshua Sobol was in the capital on Dec 27, 2017 to promote the play's Chinese version. [Photo provided to China Daily]


"There were 300 seats in the theater but they always sold more than that. When they celebrated the 100th performance, their records showed they had sold 35,000 tickets, which means the shows were overbooked."


Since the play is about a theater, Sobol uses lots of songs and dance pieces in it, which are based on the 400 songs and notes he found in different ghettos, and whose styles include the tango and waltz.


When Sobol met another survivor, Abraham Sutzkever, who was a famous poet, Sutzkever told him that during his time in the ghetto, he was more prolific than at any time before or after, because the possibility of death was so strong and he did not want to waste any time. One of the songs Sobol uses in the play, titled In the Sky the Stars All Glisten, was written by the poet.


He emphasizes that everything in the play is based on real events.


In the play, there is a man, named Kittel, a commander in charge of the ghetto.


One day, a group of women were taken away by the German soldiers to the nearby forest to be killed. They were asked to take their clothes off and stand still.


Before the shooting began, the soldiers were joking and drinking. It was a cold winter day. So, one of the women turned around and said to Kittel.


"Officer, if you don't shoot us quickly, we will freeze to death," the woman said.


"Are you cold?" Kittel asked. After the woman nodded, Kittel asked her to dress up and ordered the soldiers to kill the other women.


The woman was sent back to the ghetto alive.


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