Let Your Children Tell
Photo by Kathy Dollyhigh
Commissioned in 2001 by the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust, Let Your Children Tell, was created to demonstrate to the state’s young people what happens when racism goes unchecked. Through journal entries of four young people caught in the net of Nazi racism—a German and an Austrian Gypsy who experienced Auschwitz, a Dutch girl who hid in Amsterdam and a 13 year-old- Hungarian confined to a ghetto–each tells how Nazi laws and pogroms affected his or her life. The production is accompanied by an original violin score, played live. Since its premiere, this production has been performed across the state in middle and high schools for more than 100,000 young people. Classroom evaluations have demonstrated significant student gains in understanding history.
5 actors, 45 minutes • Suitable for Middle and High Schoolers
What was the Holocaust?
The Holocaust was the mass murder of Jewish people under the German Nazi regime during the period 1941–5. More than 6 million European Jews, as well as members of other persecuted groups such as Romani and gay people, were murdered at concentration camps such as Auschwitz.
*View the Holocaust timeline at the Museum of Tolerance
Eva Heyman (Hungarian: Heyman Éva, 13 February 1931 – 17 October 1944) was a Jewish girl from Oradea. She began keeping a diary in 1944 during the German occupation of Hungary. Published under the name The Diary of Eva Heyman, her diary has been compared to The Diary of Anne Frank. She discusses the extreme deterioration of the circumstances the Jewish community faced in the city, offering a detailed account of the increasingly restrictive anti-Jewish laws, the psychological anguish and despair, the loss of their rights and liberties and the confiscation of property they endured. Heyman was 13 years old when she and her grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust.
In May 2019, the Eva Stories project was launched, visually depicting extracts from her diary on Instagram. On International Holocaust Day 2020 (27 January), Eva Stories was also launched on Snapchat.”
Touring Theatre of North Carolina Educational Podcast Series
Let Your Children Tell
Video Clip from Let Your Children Tell
Cost
Within Guilford County
Outside of Guilford County
Production Process
- Production sets are minimal and require no special equipment from schools for set-up or break-down
- Actors set up and break down the minimal production sets
- Performances can be held in classrooms, auditoriums, multipurpose rooms, cafeterias and theatres
- The company prefers no more than 300 students in the audience
- The company’s Production Manager, Kay Thomas will work with schools to schedule performances
- The performers will need the use of a dressing room or bathroom in order to change in to costumes
- Elementary school productions are 35 minutes in length and middle and high school productions are 45 minutes in length
Study Guides, Workshops & Residencies
Comprehensive study guides accompany all productions. The guides are designed to help teachers prepare the students for that particular show and they include a pre and post-testing tool. Specific exercises are developed that demonstrate clear linkage between the productions content and Guilford County Schools Common Core Curriculum. Workshops and Residencies have been created for each production and are available at an additional cost.
To Book a Performance
Email the Production Coordinator, Kay Thomas, at kay@ttnc.org or call 336.337.4925
Performance Review
Let Your Children Tell brings stories of unimaginable horror that are told matter‐of‐factly but with intensity and shock by the young characters. Their individual stories of horror, collected and skillfully interwoven by author/director Brenda Schleunes, show the awful human cost of racial prejudice and injustice run amok. Schleunes has selected passages from diaries and letters to show how family affection, concerns about boyfriends, clothes or education were shattered and submerged in the struggle to stay alive in a sea of death and hate. On a bare stage, handling a minimum of props, the players carry their words and thoughts into movements well-choreographed by Anne Deloria. Designed to tour, the production was commissioned by the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. No strong appeal for humanity and understanding of the evils of hate and prejudice can be stronger than the actual words of these children.