Holocaust Works

Faces of Terezin (2000)

Housing the aged, and also many artists, musicians, and children, Terezin was different. It was built 200 years ago as a walled garrison town, to deter the enemy from the north-west. Terezin became one of Hitler's Concentration Camps, and was used to deceive the International Red Cross to accept his claim that it was a model camp. Yet Terezin was known as "The Big Lie", with thousands transported to the Extermination Camps in the east, such as Birkenau. While at Terezin the children were allowed no formal schooling, but were taught art, music, and drama. Many concert performances were held. Hundreds of pictures and poems, hidden for many years, have been recovered. Eight poems selected for this dance work show the changing activities and moods of the children, and demonstrate their strong spiritual resistance. Very few children survived: 100 of 15,000.

Past Window (1999)

Dancer Erin Panaciulli was so inspired by her portrayal of Judith Kàlmàn in Spirit Unbroken that she composed a poem, Past Window, about a young girl of the Holocaust. The four-minute solo work, choreographed to her poem and set to the music of John Williams (Auschwitz-Birkenau from Schindler's List), was created to stir the imagination through emotion, rhythm, and sound.

Past Window

Feel the smoothness of the glass.
Sense the cold from outside.
Oh, how I remember that night.

Peering out the window, the same coldness
Soldiers everywhere, yelling ,screaming
Guns; telling us to go to the factory immediately.

They were awful, heartless souls, Nazis.
The thought makes me cringe.

They forced us to work. If you stopped "God" you would
Never know. My mother and I were forced to walk on the side of the
road and kiss the filthy ground.

Friends, "so called," pointed and laughed. I covered my face
My mother and I, in shame.

The village, a ghetto. Our lives, gone.
Belief in God, strong.
Even if He is silent.

Soon we were deported. Cold, shaking, dark;
Reaching for a drop of water through a crack,
Remembering, Grandma's once enjoyed garden.

My young, slim body, half-dead,
Reached the final destination.
Weak and tired I clenched my fist
Feeling anger.

Watching one by one, going our own ways.
Seeing smog from the fire.
I went opposite.

My mother "Why" gone.
Feeling the ashes between my fingers
Unwanting to believe
it's over.

Wiping my bony face
I reach my hands up
Towards the silence, feeling the pain, once more.

My hands scarred; forever. Only thing remains,
The "Me" missing from my past
Through the cold window.

-Erin Panaciulli

Spirit Unbroken (1997)

Spirit Unbroken was choreographed as a dance-drama depicting adolescent girls caught up in the turmoil of the Holocaust. Part I takes place in the ghetto. Part II is the deportation by train to an extermination camp as part of Hitler's "Final Solution." The work is dedicated to those who suffered under Nazi tyranny.