As antisemitism rises, we need this rural Missouri school play’s message even more

The Chillicothe High School play that students performed this past weekend, “Courage and Love: the George & Erika Mandler Story,” tells the story of a Jewish couple who, along with their families, escaped Nazi Germany, narrowly avoiding the Auschwitz extermination camp, and lived out their lives in this north-central Missouri town about an hour from Kansas City.

The play was first performed by Chillicothe students 14 years ago and had not been staged anywhere since. Until now.

But the performance almost didn’t take place. A rise in antisemitic rhetoric, violence and threats of terror toward Jews left school and district officials questioning the timing for this student play.

Would students be safe?

What a shame if the play had been canceled, because we believe what Lisa Rule believes. She’s the high school drama director who wrote the play about Holocaust survivors George and Erika Mandler: That art matters — including the performing arts at the high school level, where students engage in ideas and topics that can both inspire and challenge them.

“Kids need to hear these stories,” Rule said. “They need a counter to the hate and misinformation” found on social media.

“Courage and Love,” a story of struggle, sacrifice, love and courage, represents the very opposite of the hate increasingly spewed about Jewish people and by Holocaust deniers across the country.

Erika Mandler was born into a well-off Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. She was a teen in the late 1930s when the Nazis moved into Vienna, her father lost his job and the family found itself alienated by non-Jewish friends. The play details the family’s flight to Czechoslovakia, the death of Erika’s first love at Auschwitz, and how her relationship with a doctor at a slave labor camp spared her being sent to a death camp. After her escape from the prison camp, she spent months hiding from the Nazis in the Czech mountains with her future husband. But her parents were caught and perished in German camps.

After the war, the Mandlers emigrated to the United States and in 1950 made their way to Chillicothe. The first time they shared their story was in 1981. Rule interviewed Erika Mandler to write the play in 2007. Erika died in 2010, two years after she saw her life reflected on a stage in Chillicothe. George died in 1994.

This year’s performance came at a time of increasing antisemitic behavior in the U.S. Last month, famed rapper and entrepreneur Kanye West set off huge controversy after publicly spewing hate speech aimed at Jewish people, reiterating it on social media and then amplifying his ugly rhetoric in interviews. The consequences were swift: Several companies terminated relationships and brand deals with the rapper, who now calls himself Ye. Then, three days after Ye made an antisemitic Twitter post vowing to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt — at the time a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat he won last week — posted a tweet supporting the rapper. (Schmitt later deleted the tweet.)

This month, the Brooklyn Nets suspended player Kyrie Irving indefinitely for posting a link on Twitter to an antisemitic film. And the FBI warned of widespread threats to New Jersey synagogues.

In this month’s midterm elections, antisemitic rhetoric crept into the Pennsylvania governor’s race when an adviser to Republican nominee Doug Mastriano questioned the Jewish faith of his opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro. Voters had the last word though, with Shapiro winning in a landslide.

Rule and Chillicothe schools superintendent Daniel Wiebers decided students “need to know that those are not the only voices.” And a play about a local family could help students understand the horror of what happened to millions of people in Nazi Germany just some 75 years ago during World War II.

Still, the district wasn’t taking chances and had to increase security for the performance.

Chillicothe middle and high school students were enthralled by the play, Rule said. “This one little boy came to me and said, ‘That was very sad.’ I told him yes, it was.”

We agree with Rule that hate should never be allowed to win. “I’m so afraid that we will forget this story with so much misinformation out there. That’s why we take the risk,” she said.

It’s also why we hope Rule will take her play on the road to Kansas City. “Courage and Love” is what we all need right now.

This story was originally published November 15, 2022 at 8:30 AM.