A lost comedy cabaret from the Terezin ghetto is reconstructed and finally staged

Originally banned by the camp’s Jewish leadership after dress rehearsal due to its boldness, Nazi victim Karel Švenk’s ‘The Last Cyclist’ is now getting its turn in the limelight – By RENEE GHERT-ZAND

Before World War II, Karel Švenk was a pioneer of avant-garde theater in Prague. A young actor, director, composer, and writer, he had a bright future ahead of him. Then the Holocaust began and Švenk was deported by the Nazis to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto-concentration camp in November 1941. Despite intolerable living conditions, cultural life thrived among the Terezin inmates. Theater and cabaret were a crucial part of this, and the well-liked Љvenk was a leader.

Then the Holocaust began and Švenk was deported by the Nazis to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto-concentration camp in November 1941. Despite intolerable living conditions, cultural life thrived among the Terezin inmates. Theater and cabaret were a crucial part of this, and the well-liked Љvenk was a leader.

He wrote six cabarets that were performed in the camp dozens of times each. “Terezin March,” his song for the finale of the first of these shows, became an unofficial anthem of hope among the inmates.

A seventh cabaret, “The Last Cyclist,” did not make it past its dress rehearsal when the camp’s Nazi-appointed Jewish leadership, the Council of Elders, banned it because of its explicit allegory to the Nazi regime and its agenda. The inmates could often get away with humor and satire, but this was a step too far, and the council members — who answered to the Nazis but sought above all to keep their Jewish brethren safe — feared a Nazi reprisal were the play to be staged.

Švenk  original scripts and notes for all his Terezin cabarets were lost when he took them with him upon his deportation to Auschwitz on October 1, 1944. He died at age 28 on a death march from a slave labor sub-camp of Buchenwald in April 1945, just a few weeks before the war’s end.