Diane Samuels’ latest drama tells the story of Miriam Freedman, who learned how to live with the loss of her family members in Holocaust
November 10, 2023 11:00
We live in a time where it may not be possible to imagine ever recovering from atrocity. But the life and times of 89-year-old Miriam Freedman are evidence that even the greatest outrage can be overcome by those who survive them.
Raised in an Orthodox family in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), Miriam spent much of the war as a toddler hiding in the small town of Nitra with her mother and six others, crammed into a basement deliberately smeared with excrement and so small that Germans hunting for Jews never suspected it could be inhabited by people.
After the war, Miriam discovered that her father, brother and sister had been murdered in the Holocaust.
How you might ask could anyone ever psychologically recover from such experiences, let alone forgive those who perpetrated them. Yet Miriam has.
“It begins with a meditation,” says playwright Diane Samuels.
Best known for the 1993 modern classic Kindertransport, Samuels is referring to her latest work All About Miriam, a multimedia show based on Miriam’s memoir Love Is Always The Answer. Directed by the actor Ben Caplan, the show receives its premiere at JW3 next week.
“The piece is also called Meditations On Survival And Beyond, so I wouldn’t say this is primarily a Holocaust story,’ continues Samuels.
“It’s a moving story about a very inspiring woman and her self-inquiry into facing what she experienced. I think it really speaks to people now.”
The evening is dominated by a big screen with images and video footage relating to Miriam’s story. A clarinet player accompanies the piece, interweaving music around the recorded voice of Miriam who was interviewed for the production.
Speaking from her home in Finchley Central, Miriam casts her mind back to her life in Israel and Britain after the war, which included a spell as the Jewish Agency’s representative of Israel in Northern Ireland.
This was before she met her mentors, who include Irina Tweedie, the Russian-born leading practitioner of meditation and Sufism.
“I was living in denial and isolation,” says Miriam.
“I didn’t want to see people and couldn’t relate to them [although] I’ve always considered myself a social person.”
She hesitates to say that she suffered from depression but back then her symptoms also included physical pain, which she partly ascribes to her impossibly cramped hiding conditions.
