„Nemzetünk söpredéke”. Az első (?) magyar holokausztdarab kolozsvári bemutatója
“The Scum of Our Nation”: The Kolozsvár (Cluj) Premiere of the First (?) Hungarian Holocaust Play

Summary/Abstract: The premier of Ignác Weinréb’s drama Gyávák és hősök (‘Cowards and Heroes’) took place in the City Theater of Kolozsvár (Cluj), Romania, on 7 July 1945; the play was performed at least five times. This drama in five acts tells the story of a Jewish family taken to Auschwitz and then liberated by the Soviets, using a remarkably direct language, representing the reality of the Holocaust experience in a historically faithful, almost documentary manner. I consider it one of the earliest – if not the first – drama in Hungarian about the Holocaust. To the best of my knowledge, it was never performed again in other theaters in Hungary or Romania, never published, and its author was completely forgotten. In my paper I will give a context of the play, have a close reading of it, and reconstruct as much as possible about its author’s literary career.

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