Playing for Time, Playing with Fire

Join THGAAC Director of Education Dr. J.E. Wolfson as he presents "Playing for Time, Playing with Fire" during Shalom Austin's Yom HaShoah Educational Electives to commemorate Yom HaShoah 2021.

This session presents a fascinating and timely case study in the current  climate of “cancel culture.” The Emmy-winning 1980 CBS telefilm, Playing for Time, stands as one of the most critically lauded films about the Shoah, and its source text, The Musicians of Auschwitz, is one of the most widely taught Holocaust memoirs in classrooms across the country. However, there are calls to remove the film and book from the canon and class syllabi. Controversies include: the casting of anti-Israel activist Vanessa Redgrave in the lead role as a Jewish member of the women’s orchestra of Auschwitz; the subsequent boycott of the film by some Jewish organizations, along with accusations that Redgrave was the victim of a “Jewish” blacklist; screenwriter Arthur Miller’s alterations to the narrative; and the less widely known (though persuasive) charges that the memoirist falsified large portions of her account. Class participants can follow along without having seen the film or read the memoir.

Register here.

Yom HaShoah educational electives are part of Shalom Austin’s Meaningful Month of April.