An attempt to stage a play in Dublin depicting Zionists as Nazi collaborators during World War II has aroused the wrath of Ireland’s 2,000-member Jewish community.
The play, “Perdition,” by Jim Allen, was to have opened at London’s Royal Court Theatre but was cancelled last week after protests by British Jews and by leading scholars and historians who, on reading the script, branded it a travesty.
Allen has since been negotiating with the Olympia Theater in Dublin to present his work, which purports to be based on events in Hungary in 1944 where local Jewish leaders tried desperately to barter trucks and money to the Nazis for Jewish lives.
Joe Briscoe, head of the Jewish Representative Council in Dublin, said the play consisted of “downright lies” and was harmful to Jews. He noted that Allen has been peddling his play around Europe. “It is no great compliment to Dublin that it is the last city in which they are trying to stage it,” he said.
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