Creatives face parallels to pre-war Germany

Monday, November 28, 2009. Ne’ilah, the concluding service of Yom Kippur, finds me sitting in the back row of St John’s Wood Synagogue in London.

A few minutes in, a somewhat flamboyantly-dressed gentleman sits next to me. He’s not Jewish, he explains, but he’s joining a friend to break the fast. I get him a machzor and show him where we are.

So far, nothing too unusual. But if I tell you the man’s name was George O’Dowd, otherwise known as Boy George, the story takes on a whole new perspective.

Boy George – three weeks ago a pioneer of the 1980s New Romantic scene who went on to reinvent himself as a club DJ and judge on The Voice.

Now though, a hero to the global Jewish community. One of the very few celebrities in the vast pantheon of stars who has refused to succumb to mob mentality which mandates sporting a keffiyeh, real or metaphorical, every time you take to the red carpet.

And for that, Boy has paid a price. (Having sat next to him in shule, surely I’m entitled to call him by his first name?)

He’s had to step down from a role in a major West End musical, he has split from his manager and he has been disavowed by the virtue-signalling masses in the entertainment industry.

While that kind of cancellation usually only afflicts those in the showbiz fraternity guilty of some form of racism or sexual abuse, for Jewish creatives, it’s an all too familiar tale.

For the past three years almost, countless artists and performers have paid a price for a conflict they play no part in.

They do not even need to stand up for Israel in public to feel the cold hand of cancel culture on their shoulder.

Simply by virtue of being Jewish, they are shunned and scorned. Or, Inquisition-style, they are required to renounce and denounce the Jewish state before they are allowed to step on stage.

We heard all about it during the Royal Commission. Deborah Conway – invitations rescinded and appearances cancelled; Joshua Moshe dropped from his band; Nina Sanadze – exhibitions pulled; comedian “CGM” forced to quit a show.

And these are just the tip of the iceberg. There was the doxxing of hundreds of Jewish creatives, their details made public so they could be treated as pariahs by their peers in the worlds of entertainment and culture; and the venues refusing to host shows under pressure from pro-Palestinian protesters.

Last month, I took to the stage myself, performing a one-man play I’d written about my great-grandfather. In this instance, I wasn’t a victim of antisemitic activists. But my great-grandfather, who I appear as, had been, and that is very much the crux of the story I tell.

At the time of writing it, I wasn’t consciously looking to draw parallels with his career as a composer in pre-war Germany and the experiences of Jewish creatives today. But when I stood on stage, inhabiting the character and recalling key episodes in his life, the similarities became clear.

There is one moment, for instance, when I explain that I had to change my name in the early 1930s as the Nazi party gained in popularity: “I could no longer be Heinz Lewin the Jew. No theatre or motion picture studio would employ such vermin.”

Even adopting a name that’s “far more cosmopolitan, far less semitic” doesn’t stem the tide: “Music by Jewish artists is deemed to be ‘entartete’ – degenerate”, something of a shock to Heinz who considers himself to be “the embodiment of culture, and my music, the pinnacle of artistic achievement”.

As the play progresses, Heinz is deserted by erstwhile acquaintances, notable names from the world of Weimar entertainment who choose loyalty to the Fuhrer over loyalty to friends.

In one particularly egregious example, Else Elster, a famous film star of the age who sings one of his songs in a hit movie, goes on to appear in Jud Süss, one of the most infamous antisemitic propaganda films produced by the Nazis: “So Else is no longer friends with der Jud Lewin, but she is friends with Goebbels.”

With the work drying up and a ban on “entartete” music, the once-celebrated composer finds himself in financial straits.

We can only pray that’s where the parallels end, as Heinz’s fate was to spend two years in a labour camp before being deported to Auschwitz, a destination he never returned from.

Ultimately though, the play, which I’m performing again this weekend, is a story of resilience, of artists and musicians, in Heinz’s words, “bringing hope where there is no hope, bringing joy where there is no joy”.

That same resilience has been demonstrated since October 7, 2023 by so many in our community, committed to the old adage that the show must go on.

And despite everything we have experienced, true to the name of the play, which is taken from Heinz’s acclaimed 1910 operetta, Morgen Wieder Lustik, tomorrow will be cheerful, again.

Zeddy Lawrence is a former national editor of The AJN.

Morgen Wieder Lustik is on Sunday, 23 August. Info/tickets: morgenplay.com