Lights Up on the Dark: The Holocaust Onstage

In this week’s episode, coinciding with Yom HaShoah, Sam and Alex look at Here There Are Blueberries by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich. Here There Are Blueberries tells the story of an album donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum containing never-before-seen photographic evidence of Nazi officers and staff at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. In the play, Museum archivi...

CONTENT WARNING: References to suicide; sexual references In this week’s episode, originally recorded for Women’s History Month, Sam and Alex look at Gail Louw’s 2013 one-woman play Blonde Poison . Stella Goldschlag was living illegally in war-torn Berlin when she herself was betrayed and tortured. When offered the chance of saving herself and her parents from the death camps, she agreed to be a G...

CONTENT WARNING: Explicit content and references to suicide In this week’s episode, coinciding with the end of Queer History Month in the UK, Sam and Alex explore Martin Sherman’s groundbreaking play Bent . The first major play - if not the first play - to represent the Nazi persecution of gay men, Bent tells the story of hedonist Max, living in 1930s Berlin until he and his lover Rudy are hunted...

CONTENT WARNING: References to suicide In this week’s episode, Sam and Alex talk to director and dramaturg Paul Bargetto about devised part process, part docu-drama Album Karla Höckera / The Album of Karl Höcker . Co-created by Paul in collaboration with his team at Teatr Trans-Atlantyk, an international independent theatre ensemble from Warsaw, the piece delves into the album of 116 photos receiv...

In this week’s season premiere, timed to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day and its 2026 theme of “Bridging Generations,” Sam and Alex look at Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt . At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna. But Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptised Jew married to Catholic Gretl, has moved up in the world. Gathered in the Me...

In this episode - the last one of Season 2 - Sam and Alex look back on 2025 and the first two seasons of LUOTD. They recap how the podcast came about; talk about the highlights, from special guests to a global audience; the challenges, including politics and time zones; their top three Holocaust plays so far; podcast plans for 2026; and how even 103 editing notes for a single episode hasn’t ruined...

In this episode, Sam and Alex explore Kindertransport by Diane Samuels. In 1938-39, nearly 10,000 mostly Jewish children were brought to the UK as part of a humanitarian mission that rescued them from what was to come in Nazi-occupied Europe - but meant that many never saw their parents again. Kindertransport draws upon the experiences of kinder and rescuers to look at what it means to survive whe...

In this week’s episode, Sam and Alex look at two short plays for middle schoolers: Rescued From The Holocaust by Sean Price and Dr. Yanush Korczak by Alina Kentof. As well as a discussion about the highlights, challenges and contemporary relevance of working with the plays, the pair explore the historical contexts behind each one. American diplomat Varian Fry led successful efforts in southern Fra...

“In the last clearing of the Warsaw Ghetto three children find themselves on a transportation to Auschwitz and encounter the Fool of the Warsaw Ghetto. He offers them a moment of magic in which to escape – if they have the courage to take it… Not all stories have a happy ending, but they should all begin with outrageous hope.” In the second part of this special two-part episode, Sam and Alex conti...

In the first part of this special two-part episode, Sam and Alex look at a vibrant part of Jewish culture that was nearly lost during the Holocaust: the drut’syla storytelling tradition. Special guest Shonaleigh Cumbers, believed to be the last living drut’syla , talks to the girls about the tradition and her life and experiences as a storyteller. She also offers some insights into her incredible...

Wilkommen, bienvenue , welcome…the girls are back! In the season premiere, Sam and Alex look at the iconic musical Cabaret and ask: Is it a ‘Holocaust play’? The conversation includes their encounters with it, from childhood memories up to recent performances in London and New York; key differences between the film and the stage version(s); the depictions of characters from Clifford and Sally to H...

In this week’s episode, Sam and Alex look at Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Fania Fénelon’s memoir of her time in the women’s orchestra of Auschwitz. The pair talk about the history of the orchestras at Auschwitz, including the relative ‘privilege’ of the musicians; the life and experiences of Fénelon, a French singer and pianist; the moral challenges facing the orchestra members; the representatio...

Content warning: this episode contains references to disordered eating. In this week’s episode, Alex and Dr Sam talk to Professor Lisa Peschel - whose interviews with Czech survivors of Terezin/Theresienstadt led to the discovery of numerous scripts, previously thought lost, of the performances staged inside the ghetto. This led to the publication in German, Czech and English of Performing Captivi...

In this week’s episode, Dr Sam and guest co-host John Summers-Campbell explore the most naturalistic of Brecht’s works: a series of 24 episodic scenes that illustrate what life was like for ordinary Germans under the Nazis in the build-up to the Second World War. Sam and John discuss aspects such as the (under)representation of different groups; which of the scenes they think are the most powerful...

Content warning: Discussions of sexual violence and graphic descriptions of antisemitic violence and killings. In this episode - the first in the Contested Histories series - Sam and Alex explore Our Class by Tadeusz Słobodzianek, translated/adapted by Ryan Craig. Based on the controversial history of the Jedwabne pogrom , in which the Jews of the town were murdered in July 1941 by their Polish Ca...

Since its publication in 2006, John Boyne’s novel has been the subject of criticism in the world of Holocaust education. Set at Auschwitz and telling the fictional story of a friendship between the naive son of a Nazi officer and a Jewish boy imprisoned in the camp, the book continues to split opinion - with some saying it shouldn’t be utilised at all, and others pointing out its value as a tool f...

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains references to violence and a mention of SA against children. “January 1941. A terrible crime is taking place in a clinic for disabled children. The perpetrators argue that it will help struggling parents and lift the financial burden on the mighty German state. One brave voice is raised in objection. But will the doctor listen?” In this episode, Sam and Alex...

Content warning : References to suicide and SA against women and children. In this episode - the first in the Impossible Choices series - Sam and Alex explore Dmitry Glukhovsky’s The White Factory . Beginning in 1960s New York, the play follows survivor Yosef Kaufmann as he learns a notorious SS officer has finally been apprehended. Forced to confront his own experiences in the Łódź Ghetto, Yosef...

In their very first episode, Sam and Alex explore stage adaptations of Anne Frank’s diary - including one man’s obsession with telling Anne’s story; how most people don’t realise how a single play has impacted their perception of the Diary ; ideas on how working with a stage adaptation can help students engage in different ways; and how Sam bumped into Otto Frank in Amsterdam… Hosts: Samantha Mits...