Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Auschwitz Opera in London

Crossposted from Haaretz

Image by Catherine Ashmore

The hall of the London Coliseum theater in the West End was packed. A few minutes before the English National Opera was due to begin its evening performance, a varied audience had taken its seats in the elegant hall. In addition to the smartly dressed opera buffs were quite a number of young people in T-shirts, as well as tourists carrying bags from their latest shopping expedition. The orchestra began tuning its instruments and the torn black screen, spotted with rust marks, was raised. On the stage could be seen railroad tracks and overcrowded benches in faded black.

The audience had not come to hear a classical performance or a light opera filled with catchy music, but to see “The Passenger,” an opera that is set mostly in Auschwitz.

The women’s enchanting voices sang about the SS, while the choir pitched in with a loud chorus about Auschwitz. The opera’s story, based on a book by Zofia Posmysz, a Polish Catholic woman who survived three years at the death camp, is about an Auschwitz survivor and an Auschwitz guard who meet on the deck of a cruise ship heading to Brazil.

Read more at Haaretz.com

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.