HOLOCAUST SYNDROME, A PLAY OF SURVIVAL AND HISTORY
Holocaust Syndrome will be shown at Studio Theater in Exile @ Hudson Valley MOCA, 1701 Main Street, Peekskill, NY 10566, on April 25-26, 2026, 3:00PM with a Q and A with Levy-Erber and Mills.
Tickets will be available soon. Please check back for further information.
Holocaust Syndrome is the story of Emmi, child Holocaust survivor anddaughter of a survivor and resistance fighter whose seemingly successful post Holocaust life begins to break apart. Emmi, a professor and Holocaust speaker, fighting inner demons, reflects on and returns to the past to find a way out ofthe dilemma of persecution and fear.
Holocaust Syndrome is based on Aliza levy-Erber’s, the playwright, own history. From being a hidden child in an underground bunker somewhere in the Dutch woods, to Israel, and then to the United States, Holocaust Syndrome examines a life’s journey trying to understand her own and family trauma. It examines a mother-daughter relationship based on atraumatized and distant mother who could not nurture her child. In 2002, Dr. Levy-Erber travelled to Budapest and Prague with the Herbert Mark Newman Theater company to perform Promised Land by Jessica Litvak, directed by Mara Mills, as a Rebbetzin smuggled out of a camp by theJewish Resistance. A side trip to the Theresienstadt concentration camp brought Levy-Erber her first information about the history of her father, who was aprisoner in Theresienstadt where he contracted Typhus before being shipped toAuschwitz, where he died. “The trip,” says Levy-Erber, “And the role, changedmy life and set me on the search for identity, understanding, and teaching.”Aliza Levy-Erber is a Rabbinic Pastor, College Professor, Hebrew Teacher, Playwright, Author, and Speaker and a Podiatric Physician.
Mara Mills as Director and Jeremy Gratt, Designer, took Promised Land the company to Budapest as theonly English-Speaking play in the Second Annual Jewish Arts Festival and thenonto Prague to visit the Theresienstadt concentration camp where they filmedLevy-Erber saying Kaddish in the deportation barracks and her discovery thather biological father, whom she had never met, had been a prisoner there. Levy-Erber wrote her first version of Holocaust Syndrome after returning to the states... and life went on. When Mara Mills became Artistic Director of StudioTheater in Exile and Jeremy Gratt became the Producer and Designer, Marasuggested that they take the seven-character play and rewrite it as a one-woman show with Levy-Erber as playwright and Mara as dramaturge and director.
And then there was Covid, andwriting went on Zoom. When the play was finished, and audiences were ready toreturn to the theater, Levy-Erber was suffering from health and mobilityissues. It was then decided to create the film of the play. We did not see itas an archive video of the play or asa transformation into the film genre. Itis meant to be seen as a play, which this Levy-Erber and Mills to work astheater professionals exploring deeply into the issues of trauma and historyand set it onstage where Emmie, the character, goes between the classroom inwhich she teaches Holocaust and her therapist’s office where she tries to cometo terms with her own life... and her mother’s.
