L ifestyle /C ulture
Play Inspired by Concentration Camp Story Debuts
T H EATER
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
STEVEN FISHER IS NOT
Jewish. He actually grew up in
a Catholic family in Delaware
County. But he was inspired to write
“The Last Boy,” a play about the
Holocaust, anyway.

The playwright described
the story of “The Last Boy,”
which opened a two-week
off-Broadway run at the Theatre
at St. Clement’s in New York
City on July 10, as “Dead Poets
Society Meets Anne Frank.” It’s
a historical fiction inspired by
Terezin, a Nazi concentration
camp where a group of young
boys created a secret literary
society and hand-produced a
weekly magazine, Vedem, with
poems and prose. Toward the
end of World War II, as the
Allies advanced and the Nazis
started burning their records,
the only remaining member
of the society left in the camp,
Sidney Taussig, buried the
Vedem archives.

Upon liberation, Taussig dug
up the archives and brought
them with him to Prague,
ensuring their survival. Most
of his friends in the society,
though, about 85 out of the
100, according to Fisher, died
in the Holocaust.

Fisher discovered the story in
his former life as a youth choir
director in the Philadelphia
area. Every year he would take
his Keystone State Boychoir
on performance tours/educa-
tional trips. Several years ago,
he decided to take the choir to
the Terezin site in the Czech
Republic because he was worried
that the historical memory of
the Holocaust was fading, he
said. During a pretrip to the
site, now a museum, to scout
the location, Fisher bought a
book with the highlights from
those old Vedem archives. He
took it back to his hotel room,
started reading and didn’t sleep
that night.

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Fisher was hooked on the
boys’ stories about missing
food and about being excited
to be away from their parents,
and to be living with other
boys their own age. He was
also amused by their bawdi-
ness and their evisceration of
their “dorm dad.”
“These were teenage boys,”
Fisher said.

After the choir trip to
Terezin, Fisher learned that
Taussig was still alive, and
living in Florida. He visited
the survivor and got a first-
hand account of life in the
camp. Taussig told his guest
stories about hearing other
boys crying themselves to sleep
over hunger, and about seeing
the Nazis post regular lists of
about 1,000 people who would
be “transported east.”
“They didn’t know what was
east,” Fisher said. “But they
knew it wasn’t good.”
Taussig also explained
Vedem’s editorial process: The
100 or so boys would submit
entries to the editor each week,
and three or four would be
selected. Then, the boys would
gather every Friday at sundown
— in the attic during winter,
outside during summer — to
read their poems and stories
aloud. After that visit, Fisher
brought Taussig to Philadelphia
for the choir to honor him
at the National Museum of
American Jewish History. For
that June 2019 event, Fisher
wrote a musical performance
about the Vedem story. But
when the performance ended,
he asked Taussig if he could
take it a step further: Fisher
wrote plays in his spare time,
and he was still holding onto a
childhood dream of getting one
to Broadway. Now he wanted
to write a play inspired by the
story of Taussig and Vedem.

Taussig gave his blessing, on
one condition.

“I just want to see it on
Broadway before time does to
me what Hitler failed to do,”
The title card for “The Last Boy,” a play about Jewish boys who created a literary magazine while living in a
concentration camp.

Courtesy of Steven Fisher
I just want to see it on Broadway before time does to me what Hitler
failed to do.”
SIDNEY TAUSSIG
Taussig said to Fisher.

The choir director wrote
the play and in October 2020,
after 30 years of running youth
choir programs, he retired.

Then, he decided to raise
money and turn the play into
an off-Broadway production,
hoping it would be ready to
debut just as the world was
ready to reopen after the
pandemic faded.

“The Last Boy” was the first
NYC premiere since the theater
industry closed in March 2020.

Taussig can’t attend this run
because he’s recovering from a
broken femur, but the plan was
never for him to be there: It was
for him to be in the audience
for the Broadway opening.

“We do have hopes of
moving it to Broadway, and
we’ll bring him up from Florida
as the inspiration for the story,”
Fisher said.

Tickets to the remaining
shows are available via the
event’s website: thelastboy.info.

JEWISH EXPONENT
Ten percent of the proceeds
will go to NMAJH in honor
of the late real estate icon Ron
Rubin, who was instrumental
in the museum’s founding,
according to Suzanne Cohn,
a Philadelphia resident,
Holocaust survivor and friend
of both Fisher and Rubin. l
jsaffren@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JULY 15, 2021
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