Tribute to a ghetto hero

NOTES From the Warsaw Ghetto is a play by Neil Cole based on the work of Emanuel Ringelblum, who secretly compiled vital information about what was happening in the ghetto and smuggled it to the outside world.

Although Ringelblum did not survive the war, his important work was noticed by American Elayne Le Truink, who unsuccessfully attempted to write a book based on Ringelblum’s work.

Le Truink had read Cole’s The Trial of Adolf Eichmann and contacted the Melbourne playwright to ask him to take up the challenge.

Cole, who is associate professor of mental health at the University of Melbourne Health Research Institute and was a Victorian Labour MP from 1988-99, said that once he read the material about Ringelblum, he found it too compelling not to write a play.

Cole, who is not Jewish, spent six months researching the piece, visiting the Jewish Holocaust Museum in Elsternwick and spending hours at the State Library of Victoria.

The result was Notes From the Warsaw Ghetto, which premiered at La Mama Courthouse theatre this week.

Cole says the play is a celebration of the struggles of the Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghetto, while also emphasising the message that the Holocaust should never happen again.

In The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Cole wrote: “Eichmann was not a bureaucrat simply obeying orders, but someone actively devoted to destruction. He knew what he was doing.”

Cole said he was interested in the extremities of human suffering and psychopathic killing.

“This is the value of history and we must make a contribution to that debate.”

He said that in the face of oppression, the choice facing most people was to give in or resist.

Cole has strong views about the world of theatre and is not enamoured with the concept of subsidies.

He has written 12 plays as well as works of non-fiction. In 1999, he won the Griffith Theatre Award for the best new writing in the theatre. He has become a mental health spokesperson and activist, and is currently writing a novel.

Notes From the Warsaw Ghetto is at La Mama Courthouse, 349 Drummond Street, Carlton, until May 16. Bookings: (03) 9347 6142.

BETTY CAPLAN

PHOTO: Warsaw Ghetto hero…a scene from Notes From the Warsaw Ghetto.