LGBT+ history: The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman – how theatre gave voice to a queer Holocaust survivor

Many Holocaust plays feature Jewish teenagers coming of age in the shadow of the death camps. Yet these works often present sentimentalised, redemptive stories, such as the 1950s production of The Diary of Anne Frank. They foreground certain narratives to the exclusion of others, such as queer experiences. Speaking testimony, however, can bring such stories back into the present.

How might we use the stage to tell a different story about the Holocaust to young adults? This was the conversation with which we – Anna Hájková, a Holocaust historian, and Erika Hughes, a scholar and director of Holocaust theatre – began our project. We chose to focus on the marginalised topic of the queer coming-of-age experience because it offered a powerful counterpoint to the usual stories of the Holocaust.