Suggestions for teachers
These suggestions provide a springboard for a discussion about refugees from the Nazis and how their experience compares to today’s asylum seekers.
We left much horror behind us, and we expected much misery ahead […] But when we found that we were also lonely, that we could not communicate with others, that broke us (42)
- Do you think that running a cultural centre for refugees is a way to remain connected to the home culture left behind, or something that encourages nostalgia and sentimentality?
- Why do you think putting on plays and cabaret was important for refugees in exile?
- What do you think the audience got out of seeing a performance?
My first memory was helping my mother to make an apfel strudel (43)
For many refugees food is a powerful way of connecting with the culture and society that has been left behind. The Austrian Centre provided a vital link for many through its restaurant, and records reveal that over the weekend up to 2,000 meals were served.
- Is there a particular food that reminds you of home?
- How does the food of your grandparents generation differ from your parents' cooking?
- Where could you go if you don’t have the resources to cook your own meals?
Click here for some Austrian recipes handed down the generations.
Is it even necessary to shake up an audience that is so homogeneously composed, uniform in its attitudes, and has been sufficiently shaken up by fate? (44)
- Do you think exile theatre should offer an escape from the reality of war or seek to engage with that reality?
- Why do you think totalitarian regimes often arrest writers and artists and see them as a threat?
- Why do you think art and creative expression often develops when terrible wars and violence are happening?
- In what ways might plays be used to communicate political messages?
- How do you best connect with an audience in today's world?
You can loose your fatherland, but your mother tongue is an unlosable possession, the home of the homeless (45)
- Why do you think staging plays in the original language was important for the audience?
- Do you think that staging plays in German created unusual issues and possibly conflicts? Do you think this was fair?
- Might it be argued that staging plays in English would have been more appropriate?
By far the greatest need, however, is for the co-operation of men and women of goodwill in all parts of the country in establishing friendly contact with the refugees. To be a stranger in a strange land, to have very little opportunity of getting to understand its language, its customs and above all, its people - this surely is the worst possible fate that can overtake anyone, and it is from this that we are anxious to deliver these refugee guests of ours.(46)