Returning to NYC: Kindertransport, The Play

The play Kindertransport, by Diane Samuels, is scheduled to be performed at the historic Provincetown Playhouse (133 MacDougal Street, New York, NY) on various dates and times from February 22 through March 2, 2008, in a production offered by the Steinhardt School of New York University (NYU).

Admission is $15 ($5 with NYU ID). Call 212-998-5281 for info and reservations.

FRED SPIRA, 83

The New York Times (September 14, 2007) reports the passing of Kind Fred Spira.

Sigfried Franz Spira was born in Vienna on Aug. 7, 1924, the only child of Hans and Paula Back Spira. After emigrating to the United States, he changed his name to S. Franklin Spira, but he preferred to be called Fred....

Mr. Spira’s father, a Jew, had been a banker in Vienna. When the bank failed in 1929, he and a Christian friend opened a camera store. As the Nazis made inroads into Austrian politics even before they invaded, 14-year-old Franz Spira was barred from attending high school. He began working in the camera store — but only in the back, out of sight with his father.

In 1939 he boarded a Kindertransport, one of the trains that rescued Jewish children by taking them out of the country. He was sent to England. Then, joined by his father in May 1940, he arrived in New York. His mother arrived later that year.

In the United States, Spira and his father remained in the photography business, creating the very successful Spiratone company. He became "a photo historian and collector of photographic gadgets who is credited with helping standardize modern camera equipment and making it accessible to amateurs."

A 1979 article in Popular Photography credited Spira with the popularity of equipment including the fish-eye lens, lenses that can be switched from one camera to another, and a system of interchangeable lens mounts: "What [Henry] Ford did to our economy and culture with the concepts behind the Model A and Model T, Spira has done to photography with his accessory lenses, close-up attachments and processing machines."

Spira created an extensive photography collection and co-authored the book The History of Photography as Seen Through the Spira Collection.

Spira is survived by his wife Marilyn and their sons Greg and Jonathan.

St. Louis: Kindertransport Play

The second production of the New Jewish Theatre's 2007-2008 season will be the Diane Samuels play Kindertranport. The production will run from November 28 through December 16, 2007.

As reported by Robert A. Cohn in Jewish Light Online,

The play is described as "a powerful and resonant study in dislocation, denial, abandonment and the guilt of survival through one woman's journey" as part of the Kindertransport, the separation of 10,000 European Jewish children from their families so that they could be transported to Great Britain to escape the Holocaust.

[New Jewish Theatre Artistic Director Kathleen] Sitzer said that following performances of Kindertransport, "we will not only have local St. Louis Holocaust survivors who were actually part of the Kindertransport, but also psychologists and psychiatrists discussing the many issues of family separation, issues of abandonment and guilt which resulted from that traumatic but necessary experience."

Here is a Q&A with Samuels.

A Blog Begins

Well, this is the start of a Kindertransport-related blog.

Let's see how it goes....