Playwright Marc Smith, center, with actor Oliver von Below, right, and Helmuth Caspar von Moltke, son of a German resistance leader.
Where they went
WHO: Susan and Marc Smith, 68 and 73, of Worcester
WHERE: Germany
WHEN: Ten days in March
WHY: In celebration of Helmuth James von Moltke's 100th birthday, Marc premiered his play "A Journey to Kreisau," telling the story of von Moltke and his wife, Freya, who were at the center of the German resistance movement against the Nazis.
HOW IT BEGAN: The Smiths are co founders of Worcester Foothills Theatre, which they ran for 25 years until 1999. Susan is now an audience development consultant, while Marc is a playwright ( bluepumpkinproductions.com ). At a used bookstore in Northampton several years ago he stumbled upon a book of letters written by Helmuth to his wife between 1939 and 1945, just before he was executed by the Gestapo. "I'm Jewish and I've always been interested in the subject of German resistance," said Marc, who is active in German-Jewish Dialogue, a group that meets monthly in Belmont to discuss issues of concern to Germans and Jews. He discovered that not only was fellow Dialogue member Veronica Jochum the sister-in-law of Helmuth, but that Freya was alive and living in Norwich, Vt. After meeting her, Marc decided to tell the von Moltkes' story on stage.
ON TO KRZYZOWA : The play's premiere was sponsored by the Freya von Moltke Foundation for the New Kreisau , based in Berlin. The international group supports the preservation of the meeting and exchange center, which has become a historical resistance site. Kreisau, once part of Germany, was the town where resisters often met. The village is now part of Poland and called Krzyzowa . "We went to a foundation meeting and saw documentaries about Kreisau made by kids from Poland and Germany," Marc said. "One of the ideas of the foundation is to bring people of different cultures together to work on a project."
CENTER STAGE : The play had been read onstage in draft form in Boston in 2005, but this was the first time it had been performed. Jochum, a celebrated pianist and faculty member at New England Conservatory, played beforehand. "A Journey to Kreisau" attracted a standing-room-only audience of 300. "It was performed in English, with one British and four German actors, and the responses from the audience came at all the right moments," Susan said. "We weren't sure how successfully it would be received by people for whom English is a second language." From the final dress rehearsal to the eight-minute standing ovation at play's end , Marc was "thrilled and amazed," he said. "It was very moving. All kinds of people were there, including survivors or those whose parents were."
CHANNELING HISTORY : In Berlin, the Smiths were treated to an insider's tour of the Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament, by a German friend they'd met in Boston. They also attended a memorial concert in honor of von Moltke at which the keynote speaker was German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "I'd had a real reluctance for a long time to go to Germany," Susan said. "It was eye-opening in so many ways. In both Hamburg and Berlin, the immediacy of history was so apparent. Here in the land where the atrocities originated, people don't often think of the German resistance. But it was here."
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