A play based on the radio play by Petr Balajka in the translation by Werner Imhof Realization: rimon productions
Ottla - Franz Kafka's favorite sister
A play based on the radio play by Petr Balajka in the translation by Werner Imhof
Realization: rimon productions
Ottla David's life with her family in Prague and her deportation to Theresienstadt in 1942: on her arrival in the ghetto, she is assigned to look after the children in the orphanage. The Jewish camp doctor Felix Hershkovitz, who survived Theresienstadt and later told his daughters about his encounter with Ottla, was also there. Ottla's letters to her two girls have been preserved and allow events to be deduced and in this sense are contemporary testimonies. The events came to a head. Ottla volunteered to accompany a Kindertransport of Jewish Polish children to Sweden or Switzerland. Felix wanted to stop her in order to save her. After the war, he met her daughter Vera in Prague, who was searching in vain for her mother. For Ottla, the spiritual connection to her brother Franz Kafka was omnipresent even during this time. The play expresses this directly and indirectly through its quotations. An anecdote told about Franz Kafka also plays a dramaturgical role. Digital art drawings of the events involving Franz Kafka and his fiancée Dora Diarnant are told in five parts, corresponding on a meta-level with the children in the orphanage.
All three of Franz Kafka's sisters of blessed memory were murdered in the Shoah.
