Product Description

When Eva's parents fail to escape Germany, the child changes her name and begins the process of denial of her roots. It is only when her own daughter discovers some letters in their attic that Eva is forced to confront the truth about the past. This new edition contains several personal memoirs by children whose lives were saved by the Kindertransport. Winner of the Verity Bargate Award 1992.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47698 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Review
A powerful contribution to Holocaust literature ... presented with emotional clarity and intense sympathy. --New Yorker

About the Author
Diane Samuels was born in Liverpool in 1960 and worked as a drama teacher before becoming a full time writer in 1992. She lives in north London.

Customer Reviews

Superb. Believable, touching and chilling.
It surprises me that a play such as this is regularly performed yet still largely unknown. It centres around the character of Eva, brought to England during the Kindertransport which took Jewish children out of Germany, and her adult self, renamed Evelyn, as she helps her daughter, Faith, to move out of home for the first time. The play focuses on the importance of relationships and identity, Eva having forced herself into assimilation into the English culture at the expense of her own culture and relationship with her mother, whom she presumes died in the Holocaust, but who returns at the end, resulting in the final fusing of the Eva and Evelyn characters, who remain stubbornly separate until this point. Based around testimonies from Kindertransport survivors, the play expresses with heartrending realism the events, traumas and emotions experienced by those who escaped the holocaust. Figures of authority, such as policemen, and everyday things such as trains become metaphors for terror well into Evelyn's adult life, and her relationship with her own daughter is jeapodised as a result of her experiences. But perhaps the most chilling feature of all is the presence of the Ratcatcher, the figure of the young Eva's storybook, who led away the children, and here is personified in all the figures of male authority, a constant reminder of a child's worst nightmare: to be seperated from her parents; to be displaced; to be alone.
There is always much debate about who should be allowed to write about the holocaust and what should be written in order to do it justice, but this play has succeeded in both representation of events and as a play in its own right. It is the most sensational play I have read in a long time, and it affected me deeply, encouraging me to read more of the background to the Kindertransport and question the importance of nature versus nurture, and the expense at which mother-daughter bond is broken.

heart throbing
This play is really emotional and brings a tear to the eye as it is very heart-rending.It decribes the effects of the holocoust on children.I came across this text whilst studying in University and immediately wanted to read the entire play.I would recomend this play to everyone.