A production of the controversial play “The Man in the Glass Booth,” by Robert Shaw, scheduled to begin a one-month run tomorrow at the Saidye Bronfman Center of the YM-YWHA, was cancelled today following bitter protests from part of the Jewish community here. The Association of Survivors of Nazi Oppression threatened picketing and demonstrations if the play, which parallels the Eichmann trial in Israel in 1961, was allowed to open.
The Canadian Jewish Congress and the Allied Jewish Community Services agreed with the statement by the Association president, Lou Zablow, that the play was “insulting…to the survivors of the holocaust” and “to all segments of this community.” There are about 35,000 survivors of Nazi concentration camps and their families in Montreal who comprise about a third of the local Jewish community.
The cancellation was announced in an advertisement published on the front pages of Montreal newspapers today. After expressing regrets to ticket holders, the Board of Directors of the Saidye Bronfman Center noted that the play, scheduled as part of the Center’s current program on the theme of the holocaust, “has aroused deep and painful emotional reactions among many members of the community, particularly those pitiful few who survived that most terrible ordeal but who still bear its scars.”
The announcement said that “It was out of respect and compassion for the feelings of those survivors who live among us, as well as in response to the stated desire of the majority of the community to spare them further suffering that the Board of Directors decided to cancel the production.”
AUTHOR BLAMES ‘STUPID JEWS’
Author Robert Shaw, a British actor and playwright whose outspokenness on many issues has made him a controversial figure, waxed emotional himself over the cancellation. “It is only the stupid Jews who get emotional about the German thing in it (the play). Intelligent Jews are terribly moved by it,” Shaw said in an interview published today in the Montreal Star. He denied that the play was “pro-German” or “anti-Semitic.”
“The Man in the Glass Booth” had a successful run on Broadway and was performed in London and in Israel without stirring serious protests. It deals with the capture of an alleged Nazi mass murderer who is put on trial in Israel, ensconced in a glass booth for his protection. Parallels were drawn with the real life trial of Adolf Eichmann, but the Shaw play offers a final twist that raises unexpected aspects of guilt and responsibility.
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.
