It is not exactly a surprise that a theatre company would decide to set Romeo and Juliet in Nazi Germany. Over decades, books and films have told stories of star-crossed Nazi-Jewish couples — sometimes winning accolades, sometimes sparking bitter controversy.

In 1973, Bette Greene’s The Summer of My German Soldier told the story of a Jewish 12-year-old, Patty Bergen, who is abused by her cruel parents while growing up in a small town in Arkansas during the Second World War.

Patty falls for an English-speaking Nazi PoW, Anton, 22, and shelters him when he escapes. Eventually the FBI shoot Anton, and Patty is disowned by her family. The book was made into a film in 1978, and Greene — herself Jewish — wrote a sequel, Morning is a Long Time
Coming, in which Patty travels to Europe in search of Anton’s family.

The Summer of My German Soldier is still seen as a modern classic, although modern objections centre on the age gap between the two protagonists.

Kate Breslin’s 2014 debut novel For Such a Time was presented as a Second World War retelling of the story of Queen Esther, and was listed for two awards by the Romance
Writers of America.

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Kate Breslin's For Such A Time

A Jewish girl, Hadassah, takes on a false identity and works as a secretary for concentration camp commandant Colonel Aric von Schmidt. While Hadassah tries to save prisoners, she finds herself falling for the commandant. Eventually, she converts to Christianity.

“The stereotypes, the language, and the attempt at redeeming an SS officer as a hero belittle and demean the atrocities of the Holocaust,” wrote author and critic Sarah Wendell. “The heroine’s conversion at the end underscores the idea that the correct path is Christianity, erases her Jewish identity, and echoes the forced conversions of many Jews before, during, and after the Holocaust.”

Ryan Armstrong’s novel Love and Hate: In Nazi Germany (2018) features an SS guard who falls in love with a Jewish girl in the ghetto he is supposedly guarding (a ghetto in a German town where there was never a ghetto).

“Can love lighten one of the darkest times in our world’s history?” asks a reviewer on Goodreads. “To find love among all the death and hate is something. And it’s all the more powerful when so hard to come by.”

Louise Fein’s 2020 novel People Like Us (Daughter of the Reich in the US) was published by House of Zeus with a publicity push that emphasised Fein’s Jewish ancestry. It tells the story of SS officer’s daughter Hetty who is captivated by Hitler but falls for Walter, a Jewish man who saves her life.

Unfortunately, even the publicity material described Walter in Nazi terms (“blond-haired blue-eyed perfect-in-every-way”) and, according to Anne Garvey’s review in the JC ,“Fein’s attempt at a genuinely moving end . . . is undermined by the rest of the book having left us unenlightened and exasperated with its thin story and shallow characters.”