The Passion Play, which is staged in this Bavarian town every 10 years, will be performed 91 times in 1970, using intact the anti-Semitic text of 1850, despite world wide protests, it was learned here today.
The protests in 1966 and early 1967 reached such a pitch that Dr. Alfons Goppel, Minister President of Bavaria, promised to seek to induce the Oberammergau sponsors to use a different text. His efforts failed. Hans Schwaigerhof, who was to have directed the 1970 performances, resigned in protest against the anti-Semitic text. The text portrays the Jews as a fiendish, bloodthirsty people.
Ten leading American intellectuals joined in November, 1966, in a call for a world-wide boycott of the Passion Play. However, the village is busy now sprucing up its 50,000 guest rooms for tourists. Casting is scheduled to begin soon.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
