First and foremost, I honour my mother, Wanda Albinska — a child survivor of the Holocaust, a central protagonist of this work, and its quiet conscience. She read draft after draft of the play with unwavering enthusiasm, even when doing so required her to re-enter deeply personal and painful terrain. That she was willing to relive trauma in order to help me tell this story is an act of generosity beyond words. This work bears her imprint at every level.
I must also acknowledge my cousins, Monika Burgoa and Agnieszka Schwarzweller, daughters of Stanisław Rowiński, my mother’s younger brother. When I was barely twenty years old, they were the ones who first told me — plainly, and without drama in every sense of the word — about my Jewish heritage and about the tragic heroism of Dr Halina Rotstein, my grandmother. That conversation, held long ago and at a formative moment, quietly set me on a long and winding road. This play is, in many ways, its destination.
I am also grateful to Johanna Engie for reading early versions of the play and offering thoughtful reflections along the way.
I also wish to record a moment that mattered deeply to me: when my eldest son, Alex, said simply, “I am proud of you,” in response to Nobody Told Me. Those words carried me further than he knows.
This play rests on a deep bedrock of historical research and linguistic care. I am profoundly grateful to those who helped ensure that the work was not only emotionally truthful, but historically sound.
I wish to acknowledge Maria Ciesielska, whose monumental research work, The Doctors of the Warsaw Ghetto, provided an essential foundation for the play. Her scholarship — including material on Halina Rotstein’s work in a small first-aid shed on the Umschlagplatz, her care for abandoned infants, and testimonies describing her decision to go to her death alongside her patients — forms part of the moral and factual bedrock of this work.
I thank Agnieszka Witkowska-Krych for her meticulous historical reading and important corrections, offered with care and enthusiasm, and Jakub Nowakowski, whose close reading and scholarly expertise gave me confidence that the play’s historical spine was sound. His comments on the depth of research behind the work were particularly affirming.
I am deeply grateful to Tali Nates, Director of the Holocaust & Genocide Centre, whose rigorous engagement with the script — including her forthright insistence that it be drastically reduced — ultimately strengthened the work immeasurably, however painful that process initially felt.
I also wish to acknowledge Wiesław Tomczak, whose boundless enthusiasm and almost Inspector-Clouseau-like ability to unearth facts resulted in a remarkable body of historical material, including precious photographs and detailed information about the period in Kutno. Much of this material found its way, directly and indirectly, into the texture of the play.
Finally, I thank Zofia Szymanowska for her beautiful Polish translation of the play and for her extraordinary commitment to it — a commitment so deep that she travelled from Poland to South Africa to see it staged.
The play was shaped in rooms filled with voices — first on the sunlit balcony at 802 Sunset Towers, and later facing the red-cushioned seats of the Theatre on the Square, the scene of so many memorable theatrical moments in South Africa over the last twenty years. I owe a great debt to those who showed up, listened, read aloud, argued, questioned, encouraged, and stayed.
Among them, Les Morison was an invaluable and deeply supportive sounding board at every stage. A successful playwright in his own right, Les wrote and produced a powerful play on Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk that played to packed houses at the same Theatre on the Square — experience that he generously brought to my own process.
Aimee Mica Komorowsky, who herself wrote and produced a highly acclaimed play on Sarajevo, infused this project with her own Jewish passion and historical consciousness. We first met during visits to concentration camps in Poland, bonding immediately over shared Bosnian experiences and a common moral vocabulary. She seized the role of Ela with verve and panache and contributed meaningfully to the play’s development.
I also wish to acknowledge Kirsty Gaillard, whose early and sustained involvement was crucial in making these readings possible — organising sessions, filming readings, finding actors, and helping create the practical conditions in which the play could be heard, tested, and refined.
I further thank Kayli ‘Elit Smith, who played Maria magnificently in the early readings and offered insights that helped shape the role and the play at a formative stage, and Henrietta Scholtz, who courageously took on the demanding role of Halina in those early readings, lending the character depth and emotional truth long before the play reached the stage.
I am grateful to Mark Oppenheimer, Clifford Matthews, Brad Katzen, Bernard Katz, and Youri Licht whose engagement with the work helped test its ideas and sharpen its edges. A special word of thanks is owed to Tamsen Saayman, who attended live readings, read multiple versions of the script, and wrote a luminous essay unpacking the play’s psychological roots and inner dynamics with rare sensitivity and insight.
Some readings took place far from theatres and rehearsal rooms.
I thank Mokhlis el Idrissi, who listened to the play as I read it aloud during a road trip to Chefchaouen, and later travelled to South Africa to see the production performed.
I also thank Alisa von Wimmersperg-Ray, who listened with extraordinary patience and openness during a roadside stop on the way to Lüderitz. That she was willing to bear witness to such painful material — as a deeply sensitive and traumatised third-generation German — remains with me as a quiet act of courage and grace.
My deepest professional gratitude goes to Stephen Brown, recommended through the Writing Coach organisation led by Jacqui Lofthouse. Stephen brought to the project an exceptional combination of enthusiasm, discipline, insight, and deep knowledge of dramatic structure. His engagement was sustained, rigorous, and unfailingly professional. He challenged, refined, stabilised, and strengthened the work at every critical juncture. Quite simply, he was the rock on which this project was built.
A special word of gratitude is owed to the artists and makers who gave this work its theatrical life. Above all, I thank Ilina Perianova, whose generosity of spirit was essential to the play’s realisation. At a time when the project was still raw, unwieldy, and very much in need of work — and when I was an entirely untested playwright — she chose to commit to a production more than 7,600 kilometres away, in faraway South Africa, and to take a professional risk on a script that had yet to prove itself. Her willingness to engage deeply with the material and to help shape it into something stage-worthy was an act of artistic faith and courage. That courage is not incidental: it stands in a lineage shaped by her Jewish grandparents, who fought in the Soviet army against SS units during the war — a legacy of resistance and moral clarity that quietly underpins her work.
I am deeply grateful to the support and production team, whose work made the staging of this play possible in ways that are often invisible but absolutely decisive. Mvelisa Mvandaba who helped us find our amazing cast. Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph brought musical intelligence and emotional sensitivity to the work. Wilhelm Disbergen’s set design provided a disciplined visual frame. Vicky Friedman’s choreography gave physical form to psychological and historical tension. Gwendi Botha-Gourley’s costume design grounded the characters in period and place with precision and humanity, and Erin Blieden, as stage manager, was the calm centre of the production — holding together logistics, people, and process with professionalism and grace.
I also thank Thom Pierce, whose photography captured the spirit and gravity of the work; Jacqui Meyer, whose beautifully conceived poster and marketing materials gave the play a visual identity worthy of its themes; and Jason Werbeloff, whose digital and social-media expertise ensured the production reached audiences well beyond the theatre itself.
I also thank Renos Spanoudes, who, in his part-time role as Assistant Director, brought compassion, understanding, and empathy to the rehearsal process, and supported the work with steadiness under often challenging circumstances.
I thank the cast, who carried this material with courage, discipline, and humanity.
I am deeply grateful to the Holocaust & Genocide Centre, not only for its institutional backing but for the practical generosity that made this production possible. In particular, I thank Catherine Boyd, whose extraordinary efforts enrolled hundreds of school pupils and students to attend the performances, ensuring that the play reached the audiences for whom it was most urgently intended. I also thank Tshegofatso Ramatsetse, who generously opened the Centre’s doors by making rehearsal space available at critical moments in the process.
I also wish to acknowledge the Union of Jewish Women, Johannesburg, whose longstanding commitment to social justice, education, and humanitarian work formed part of the wider communal fabric of support within which this play was able to exist.
I am grateful to His Excellency Jacek Chodorowicz, the Polish Ambassador, and his staff, for their support of the project and for sponsoring the opening night — a gesture that mattered not only practically, but symbolically, as an act of recognition and shared historical responsibility.
I am grateful to my dear friend Rob Katz, who not only mobilised significant support within the Jewish community, but has also walked this historical terrain with me — from Treblinka to the streets of the former Warsaw Ghetto — and with whom I have had countless, searching conversations about Polish-Jewish history. I also thank Michael Kransdorff, Rabbi Zulberg, Rabbi Shaw, Rabbi Rodal and Rabbi Masinter for their support.
I am deeply grateful to the sponsors whose belief translated into access for young audiences. Rob Fihrer of Opus18 Capital Partners (formerly Capricorn Capital Partners), after a conversation of little more than two minutes at Jewish Achievers, committed immediately and without hesitation to supporting a full theatre of schoolchildren. My partner, Warren van der Merwe, through Vantage Capital, committed substantial resources to ensure inner-city learners could attend dedicated morning performances. I am also deeply appreciative of the open enthusiasm, support, and encouragement of my colleagues at Vantage Capital, which meant more to me than they may realise. I further thank Elliott Brown of Werksmans and Sean Lederman of ENS for their generous contributions to student sponsorship.
Finally — and most importantly — I offer a special word of thanks to Daphne Kuhn. At a moment when I was an untested and untried playwright, with no director attached and an unwieldy, overly long script in hand, she opened doors that might easily have remained closed. Without her willingness to take a risk, to trust the work before it had proven itself, and to give it a chance to exist in the world, this play would quite simply never have seen the light of day.
This work is mine in authorship, but it is shared in spirit. I carry each of you with me in it.