Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 11, 1991 TAG: 9104110099
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
She seems eager to validate all those facets of herself in a performance called "An Evening of Madame F," yet there is a certain "moral dilemma" in it as well.
Stevens worried that her work of "theater with music," based on various accounts of musical performances by Nazi concentration camp inmates, might be viewed as exploitive of the Holocaust.
"It is an interesting thing, really," Stevens said in a telephone interview from her Richmond home. There was a "moral dilemma for the Jewish prisoners to perform music to save their lives, and for a modern artist to use that event for artistic survival."
The one-woman show will be one of several events scheduled in the Roanoke Valley next week as part of Days of Remembrance - a series of events commemorating the estimated 6 million victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
Stevens' free performance will be April 18 at 8 p.m. in Roanoke College's Olin Hall.
Stevens describes the work as an interdisciplinary one-woman performance. She acts, sings and plays the piano as she describes the emotions of those who performed in the death camps.
She ultimately came to feel that the work is not exploitive of the suffering of the Holocaust's victims, she said, because it was commissioned by the Richmond Jewish Community Federation three years ago.
"Backing and support from the community" and an extension of the event through a post-performance discussion session with the audience make the production therapeutic as well as entertaining.
Stevens, a concert pianist who teaches music part-time at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, drew from Fania Fenelon's book on her experience at Auschwitz, "Playing for Time," as well as other survivor accounts.
The psychology of the character she portrays also was drawn from the experiences of her parents - who were refugees from the Nazi onslaught of Europe - and from the accounts of camp survivors who now live in Richmond, she said.
The 50-minute performance includes songs associated with the resistance movement, Stevens said, as well as some classical excerpts.
Fred Cohen of the University of Richmond computer technology lab composed a taped musical score using original materials as well as music that would have been heard in the camps.
The week-long Days of Remembrance commemoration begins Sunday at Lee Plaza in downtown Roanoke with an 8 a.m until 4 p.m. reading of some of the names of the Holocaust victims.
Sponsored by the Israel Friedlander lodge of B'nai B'rith, volunteers will attempt to read about 13,000 of the 3 million known names of Holocaust dead.
Lodge president Morton Rosenberg said he believes Roanoke is the only city in Virginia to be participating in an international effort to read all the known names of victims that day.
Members of the lodge, Roanoke's Beth Israel Synagogue and Temple Emanuel congregations; officials of the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the Jewish Community Council; and other guests will help with the reading.
This is the third year this event has been attempted. The Israeli Knesset, or parliament, originated the project, which now is joined by Jewish organizations around the world.
Another free public event is scheduled Monday when Katharina von Kellenbach presents a lecture on "the Righteous Gentile Women" who attempted to aid German Jews.
Von Kellenbach, a professor of Religious Studies at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., has made a special study of Christian-Jewish relations.
Von Kellenbach said in an interview last week that there was relatively little organized resistance activity in Germany during the Nazi attempt at exterminating the Jews.
But, she said, she defines resistance in terms of individual attempts to help Jews, even in cases where well-intentioned Gentiles helped their friends pack their bags for trips they never suspected would end in Nazi gas chambers.
Von Kellenbach, a German who came to the United States in 1983 to pursue her doctorate at Temple University, said she has strong personal reasons for pursuing these studies.
"Most of my family were members of the Nazi party, [including] one uncle who was directly involved in the Holocaust."
She said she became interested in the subject "when I first met Jewish people and had to come to terms with that chapter in German history."
In addition to her 8 p.m. lecture in Hollins College's DuPont Chapel, von Kellenbach will make a special presentation for high-school honor students from Roanoke and Roanoke County on Tuesday morning.
The week continues with a call-in radio program on WFIR-AM Wednesday from 9 until 11 a.m. It concludes April 21 at 3 p.m. with "An Ecumenical Service of Remembrance" at the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Roanoke, 2015 Grandin Road S.W.
The events are being sponsored by the Roanoke Chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Roanoke Jewish Community Council and the Hollins College Department of Philosophy and Religion.
by CNB