An Open Letter to John Podhoretz

A few days ago, an article in the New York Times mentioned our new show, Signs of Life, and quoted Joel Derfner, the composer, talking about some of the resonances the piece has in society today. John Podhoretz, neoconservative columnist for the New York Post and editor of Commentary magazine, took exception to Joel's word and wrote this:

SPRINGTIME FOR DUBYA?

by John Podhoretz

I’m sure you’re looking forward to the new off-Broadway musical, “Signs of Life,” which offers what promises to be a wonderfully tuneful look at the Thereseinstadt concentration camp. But it turns out, according to tomorrow’s New York Times, that the musical really isn’t about the Holocaust after all, which is probably a wise thing, since The Producers got there first with its signature number, “Springtime for Hitler.” No, it turns out, the Holocaust exists as a dramatic trope to teach us lessons about America in the age of Bush:

That show, which had its premiere on Thursday, centers on Lorelei, an artist who agrees to create pretty pictures of the camp for Nazi propaganda but who, with other prisoners, schemes to get her drawings of the real horrors to the outside world.

“The message of our show is not ‘Killing Jews is bad,’ ” Mr. Derfner said. “It’s: ‘What do you do when you find out you’ve been lied to? What is telling the truth worth?’ In the last 30 years this question has been vital to American life and especially so in the last nine years.”

No, this is not, as they say, from The Onion.

We were taken aback by the post, and we would like to respond by posting the following open letter to Mr. Podhoretz.

Dear Mr. Podhoretz:

You are well-known as a protector of the memory of the Shoah and as someone who, by his own admission, knows "the lyrics to every show tune ever written." We were therefore dismayed to read your post on Commentary about our new off-Broadway musical, Signs of Life. Your casually insulting aside about the “wonderfully tuneful” quality of the show—which as far as we can tell you have not seen—is irresponsible enough, but to make the ugly accusation that we believe “the Holocaust exists as a dramatic trope to teach us lessons about America in the age of Bush” is contemptible.

The characters in our show must participate in the Nazi propaganda machine in order to survive; when they realize the implications of their participation they face ethical choices that endanger their lives. But the obligation of citizens across the political spectrum to question our leaders and evaluate the truth of their answers did not end on V-Day.

The idea you seem to advocate—that if you put an event as vastly horrific as the Holocaust onstage you should do it as a museum piece, rather than exploring what we might learn from it about human nature—implies that today’s society is no longer capable of a Shoah, which is a position both false and dangerous.

We would like to invite you to see Signs of Life and to judge based on experience rather than distortion and mockery whether our show honors the memory of those slaughtered in the Shoah. Please e-mail us and we’ll arrange tickets for whatever date you’d like.

Yours truly,

Joel Derfner (composer)

Len Schiff (lyricist)

Peter Ullian (bookwriter)

To order tickets to Signs of Life: A Tale of Terezin, click here.

To visit the Signs of Life website, click here.

To find out more about Signs of Life off-Broadway, click here.

To visit the Signs of Life Facebook page, click here.

To visit Peter Ullian's Website, click here.

To find Peter Ullian's "Fan" Page on Facebook, click here.

To read Signs of Life Lyricist Len Schiff's blog, click here.

To visit Signs of Life composer Joel Derfner's website, click here.

To read Signs of Life composer Joel Derfner's blog, click here.

To visit director Jeremy Dobrish's website, click here.