Catholic Writer Scores Passion Play As ‘uncured Anti-semitic Bias’

A Catholic writer asserted this week that “You don’t have to be Jewish to dislike Oberammergau’s wry Passion Play,” adding: “You don’t even have to go to Bavaria to view it, as I did, in order to recognize its published script’s inconsistencies with Scripture and its uncured anti-Semitic bias.” John E. Fitzgerald, who covered “this well-known and internationally disputed folk pageant” for the national Catholic weekly “Our Sunday Visitor,” elaborated on his reactions in a front-page report in the Nov. 18 issue of Variety, the show business weekly. Mr. Fitzgerald added: “This latest production, the 36th in a 366-year history, is not just a bad production of a good play, nor a good production of a bad one, but a bad play done badly. Although dealing with a highly dramatic series of incidents. ‘Das Passiontide’ turns out to be a dull bit of drama, banal as well as bigoted.” He stated further that “The play, for most of us, like the mumps, is a once-in-a-lifetime experience; you’ve had it and that’s that. Like castor oil, it’s something you’ve been told will be good for you; so quiet down, hold your nose, and swallow. You’ll surely be a better person tomorrow.”

But, the writer added. “Someone must like Oberammergau’s Passion Play, for repeatedly they have had sellout audiences and a tremendous turn away of thousands of ticket requests…This season’s 98 performances have been seen by some 500,000 or so tourists–actually somewhat less than that since the anti-Semitic publicity caused many ticket cancellations. Still, the production will probably bring in more than $10,000,000 to this alpine hamlet whose principal industry in other years is wood carving.” It seems ironic, the Catholic writer declared, “that Christians can miss the anti-Semitic tone of the 1970 production…The irony of Christians failing to perceive such a tone is compounded by that of Germans perpetrating, perhaps unwittingly, such a concept…Nevertheless no German can afford to possibly further that which he or she especially should fight…Thus in what I’d humbly call my professional opinion. I’d apathetically suggest that the present text should be either thoroughly rewritten or scrapped. However, personally and ethically, as well as professionally and aesthetically. I must angrily add that I feel that it must be rewritten or scrapped.” Mr. Fitzgerald recalled that Adolf Hitler, who saw the Passion Play in 1934, wrote in 1942 that “never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed” and that Pontius Pilate “stands out like a firm clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry.”