An appeal for a world boycott of West Germany’s Oberammergau Passion Play, to protest a refusal by the village players to discard their “intensely anti-Semitic text,” was endorsed here today by 11 leading authors, poets and other cultural personalities.
They joined with the American Jewish Congress in that appeal at a press conference in which they declared that “the teachings of the Vatican Council seemingly have been lost on the residents of Oberammergau.” The villagers, who are the players and sponsors of the Passion Play, presented every ten years, rejected last month proposed alternatives to the present script which portrays the Jewish people as the killers of Jesus.
The 11 cultural leaders were Jacob Glatstein, the Yiddish poet and novelist, Critic Irving Howe, Novelist Leslie Fiedler, Critic Alfred Kazan, Poet Nobel Laureate Stanley Kunitz; Arthur Miller, Nobel Laureate in drama; Maurice Samuel, Critic Lionel Trilling, Actor Eli Wallach, Novelist Elie Wiesel, and Theodore Bikel, the folk-singer. Mr. Bikel joined with Dr. Joachim Prinz, chairman of the AJ Congress Commission on International Affairs, in issuing the statement which was co-signed by the other 10 personalities.
The statement added that the Oberammergau villagers remained as prejudiced as they were “throughout the Hitler era,” and that their position raised questions about the claim there was now “a new Germany with a new spiritual and intellectual atmosphere.”
Dr. Prinz said invitations were being sent to leading writers, dramatists and performing artists in Germany and other countries, asking them to join the appeal for the boycott. The signers denounced the “apparently unconquerable bigotry” of the villagers in refusing to discard “discredited canards against the Jewish people.”
The Passion Play has been using since 1860 a text by J. A. Daisenberger. Rehearsals for the 1970 performances are scheduled to begin soon in the Bavarian village. Last October 15, the villagers said they had rejected a recently-found text written in 1750 by a Benedictine monk because it “avoids restating the charge of collective decide against World Jewry.” Hans Schwaighofer, the play’s director, thereupon resigned. The statement today applauded his action.
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