site.btaThematic Evening in Burgas to Commemorate Holocaust Victims

Writers and young actors in Burgas will gather for a thematic evening on January 23, days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27). The event at the Writers' House in the seaside city is being organized by the Alef Jewish-Bulgarian Cooperation Centre in collaboration with the Burgas Writers' Community, the Polish Institute in Sofia and the Talantino Theatre Company, the Alef Centre said on Monday.

The programme of the thematic evening includes a screening of the Polish documentary Bez prawa do zycia (Without the Right to Life), directed by Waldemar Kowalski. The film presents witness accounts, archival photographs and documents about 7,000 Jews who were sent from the ghetto in Tarlow to the Treblinka extermination camp on October 19, 1942. The documentary was made on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Operation Reinhard, the secret German plan to exterminate Polish Jews during World War II. It shows the life of the Polish Jewish community in Tarlow before the war, the establishment and functioning of the ghetto, the mechanism for the liquidation of the ghetto, and the extermination of Jews in Treblinka II.

During the upcoming event, young actors from the Talantino Theatre Company will recite texts from Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's book Noah's Child, which will transport the audience back to 1942.

The thematic evening follows up on other initiatives organized by the Alef Centre to encourage young people to embrace the principles of humaneness and to turn memorable dates of world history into lessons of mutual understanding and tolerance.

Writers based in Burgas will pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.