The Esther Raab Holocaust Museum and Goodwin Education Center has been hosting performances of the play Dear Esther for over 20 years and has reached tens of thousands of students. This play presents the true story of Esther Raab and others who were part of the only mass escape from a concentration camp during the Holocaust. We have had multiple acting troupes over the years; we’ve created a teacher’s guide for the play and for a short time, we were fortunate enough to have Esther Raab herself answer questions following the performance. We have also been honored to have her sons and grandchildren join us after the performances to answer the countless questions that the students have after viewing the play. But I can truly tell you that as wonderful as it has been to have Esther and her family members be part of our program, the play itself is so compelling that the impact of the experiences is felt by all.

The playwright, Richard Rashke, did a masterful job of merging the history with lessons of today. For years, we hosted performances at our Center and had an audience of about 400 students in grades 6-12 join us at each performance. Teachers brought students from public, private, parochial, home schools, and juvenile justice system schools. We could judge the impact of the play by knowing that you could hear a pin drop in the room throughout each performance. We could judge the impact of the play by the teachers who brought their classes year after year, astounded by the reaction that their students shared with them when they returned to their own classrooms. But we most frequently judged the impact of the play by the heartfelt and insightful letters that Esther would receive from students after they saw the performance. The students wrote about the understanding they now had of the consequences of hate; they wrote about the responsibility they felt for helping others who may be different than themselves; and they wrote about the realization that they are responsible for the words that come out of their mouths.

Covid has changed so much in the field of education, and we have begun presenting these performances at individual schools rather than our Center. This seems to help schools that have concerns about their students being in an auditorium with students from multiple other schools and schools that are having issues with bus drivers. But the one thing that hasn’t really changed, or maybe it has just been brought more to the forefront, is the need for schools to find ways to help their students confront the hatred that they face every day and help to give them the tools to deal with it. Dear Esther is a powerful way to share those lessons.

Helen Kirschbaum, Director, Esther Raab Holocaust Museum and Goodwin Education Center
hkirschbaum@jfedsnj.org