THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
by Shirley Friedman

A Play in Three Acts

The action takes place in Germany, shortly after World War II. Uri, an Israeli ship's electrician of about 35 years of age, tall and slim with a fine intelligent face, comes to the shipyard to supervise work on a ship being built for the Israelis as reparation. He looks for lodgings, and there meets Helza, a lovely single mother; Frieda, her selfish and typically Germanic sister; Anna, their placid mother; Oma, old before her time, and unable to speak; and Hansie, Helza's young son.

Despite some obnoxious remarks about "Jews" by Frieda, Helza persuades Uri to rent their room, and soon a friendship springs up between them. She learns that he had a girlfriend, Shoshanah, who refused to marry him because she was unable to have children, due to experimentation by the Nazis, and also that he had been married before, but that his young wife died of starvation during the war. He learns that the father of her bastard son was an American who had returned to the USA, but still wished to marry her.

Hansie feels like he has found a father. Coming home from an outing and sitting atop Uri's shoulders, he shrilly sings an Israeli song, to Frieda's disgust. Helza too, is finding life wonderful with Uri around. And then, by chance, Uri discovers the reason why Oma cannot speak is because of the way she was interrogated by the Gestapo during the war, when she defended the Jews. He tells them that, with treatment, there is every chance that she could be cured. Anna cannot believe how changed their life has become since Uri entered their lives.

One sleepless night, Helza hears sounds from Uri's room, and believes that he has a woman in there. Disappointed, she turns away, only to hear Uri calling out in terror. She hurries to his side, where he is caught up in a nightmare, reliving the murder of his father in Roumania during the war. Waking, he brokenly tells her of the event, when a German officer shot his father in the back, and she tries to comfort him. This leads to them becoming lovers.

About this time, Anna receives a cable which has been sent to her from her old address, advising that Hans has been released and is returning. She is puzzled, but eventually realises that it has been sent from her husband who has been missing since the war, and presumed dead. There is great excitement, but Hans is not the same man that went away. He is old and broken, though he still acts as though his place in the family has not changed one iota, and also dislikes the influence Uri is having on his grandson.

Strangely, Uri's nightmares have increased, and Helza and Uri are very concerned. He feels as though he's going mad, until one day, Hansie shows him a photo of his grandfather taken during the war. With shock, Uri realises that this is the German officer who shot his father. He faces and accuses him, only to prove he is right. It is all too much for Uri. He turns to leave, to be stopped by Helza, who begs him to take her with him. But he cannot. It is more than he could forgive or forget. "The sins of the father are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" he intones.

Helza runs off weeping. Anna turns a from the murderer who is her husband, and Hans is left on stage with Oma. "Does no-one understand?" he cries. "It was war...not murder...it was war!" and turns to weep brokenly on the old lady's shoulder, as the curtain comes down.

(based upon a true story told by my husband, Shalom, but dramatised in the interests of the play.)

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For the manuscript, you can contact me at : shirleyfriedman@freemail.absa.co.za