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A Holocaust survivor and her family saw ‘Leopoldstadt.’ The Broadway play told their story.
(New York Jewish Week) — On a Wednesday evening last month, three generations of a Jewish family made their way to their seats at the Longacre Theater to see “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s epic Broadway play about the tragedies that befall an extended Jewish family in the first half of the 20th century in Vienna.
The date of the family gathering was a significant one: Nov. 9, the 84th anniversary of the Nazi pogroms known as Kristallnacht. And in the audience was Fini Konstat, 96, who lived in the once thriving Jewish neighborhood after which the play is named, and witnessed the horrors it portrays first-hand. Alongside her were her daughter and her son-in-law, Renee and James Akers, and her oldest great-grandchild, Lexi Levin, 23.
When Konstat was a child, she lived in a “nice apartment” in Leopoldstadt. But exactly 84 years to the day of their theater date, “I was running with my father, seeing all the Jewish stores with all their windows broken,” she told Levin in a short video her great-granddaughter filmed before the curtain rose.
“It’s such a blessing for me to be here with you,” Levin said to her great-grandmother in response. “Ninety-six years old, survived a pandemic, at a Broadway show in New York City.”
Left: Fini as a child on the balcony of her apartment in Leopoldstadt. Right: Fini with her three children in front of the very same building, pictured in 2015. (Courtesy)
Since the beginning of its Broadway run in mid-September, “Leopoldstadt,” with its depiction of a prosperous Viennese family on the brink of destruction, has moved audiences to tears and inspired deep reflections on the Holocaust. Based on the celebrated playwright’s own family history — of which he was barely aware while growing up in England — it has provided a stark counterpoint to news about rising antisemitism and the celebrities who have been purveying it.
But for Konstat, the play was much more personal. “When I heard the word ‘Leopoldstadt,’ this alone gave me lots of thrills and memories,” Konstat, who is known in her family as Mimi, told the New York Jewish Week in accented English. She recalled how Levin, who recently moved to the city, invited her to fly to New York to see one of Broadway’s hottest tickets.
“Leopoldstadt,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “The second district. That’s where we lived.”
At the end of Stoppard’s five-act play, audiences learn that most of the Jewish characters had perished under the Nazis — of the four generations in the show, just three cousins survive to carry on the family’s legacy.
For Konstat too, she and her parents were among the very few in their extended family to survive the Holocaust. “Almost all of them went to Auschwitz or other camps,” Konstat said. “My mother was a twin and only the twins remained alive. [My mother’s] five other siblings and my grandmother perished.”
L-R: Renee Akers, James Akers, Lexi Levin and Fini Konstat at the Longacre Theater to see Tom Stoppard’s ‘Leopoldstadt on Broadway,’ Nov. 9, 2022. (Courtesy)
In a Zoom conversation held over Thanksgiving weekend, Konstat, surrounded by two of her daughters, two of her granddaughters and three of her great-granddaughters, shared what the play meant to her — and how her family has restored what she lost.
In the months after Kristallnacht in 1938, Konstat and her parents hid in a neighbor’s apartment; Konstat recalls hiding under the duvet when German soldiers showed up. Eventually the family fled to Turkey, and then to India, before settling down in Mexico City. There, the teenage Fini met her husband David, also a survivor who escaped Poland. The two of them began to write the rest of their story — starting with the birth of the first of their three children in 1948.
Unlike many Holocaust survivors, Fini and David Konstat were open about their experiences during the war, instilling a sense of pride and duty to remember in their children — something that eventually extended to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“They were proud to speak about how they survived this,” said the Konstats’ middle child, Renee Konstat Akers. “Their life was an odyssey. They had the courage to do things that you would never think were possible. We grew up grateful knowing how our family survived in that incredible way.”
Each child moved to different places as they grew up and got married. Manuel, the oldest, stayed in Mexico. Renee married an American and moved to the Midwest, and Denise, the youngest, to Houston. Each became deeply involved in their Jewish communities, sending their children (Konstat’s grandchildren) to Jewish day schools, celebrating Jewish holidays and participating in synagogue life.
“The word ‘miracle’ really does not feel like an understatement in this scenario,” said Sherry Levin, one of Konstat’s grandchildren. “When we think about what it took for my grandmother and grandfather to survive and how they were able to intersect in Mexico, and such an amazing multi-generational family has come to fruition, it feels miraculous.”
Pictured here on their 40th anniversary, Fini and her husband David met in Mexico City after both had fled Europe. They were married 54 years before David died in 2001. (Courtesy)
Reviews of the show have ranged from rhapsodic to resistant, with some critics suggesting the play is simplistic and obvious in its story-telling or that it is less a well-crafted play than a well-meaning lesson on the Holocaust.
But just as the Merz family clashes and argues about everything from antisemitism to intermarriage to socialism in “Leopoldstadt,” each generation of the Konstat family that saw “Leopoldstadt” that night came away with something different — a reaction influenced by their age, their Jewish identity, their nationality and their relationship with their family.
For Konstat, the arc of “Leopoldstadt” was so familiar that it hardly stirred her. “It was just very happy watching it and enjoying it and enjoying my children with me, “ she told the New York Jewish Week. “I didn’t think about anybody else.”
Akers, too, felt an intense familiarity with the story, and, perhaps toughened by her own family history, didn’t experience an intense emotional reaction. Her own parents’ lives gave Akers a sense of purpose in her life — for example, in the 1990s, she was passionate about helping resettle Jews fleeing the former Soviet Union. With her own children, she instilled in them a strong sense of Jewish purpose in their work, their education and their family.
“I was a sandwich in between seeing my mother and my granddaughter,” she said of her “Leopoldstadt” experience. “I was emotional thinking of my mom who went through it, but I was more emotional about seeing my granddaughter be so moved. It really hit her at her core.”
Indeed, it was the youngest member of the family present that night who was most shaken by the play.
“It really felt like a gift to my family and to me, specifically, to be able to see what Mimi’s life looked like before the war,” Lexi Levin said, surmising that, as a fourth-generation survivor, she is among the first in her family to be able to start processing the loss on a grander scale.
“For the first time in my life, I really felt the magnitude of her loss,” she added. “I’ve known her story and I’ve been inspired by her story to be involved with my own Jewish causes, but I have never been able to access and truly empathize with her grief and what it meant that she lost the entire family she had before this one that she created.”
Turning to her great-grandmother, as if trying to make her understand the exact precision of the show, Levin explained, “It’s a play about generations and the family was large and then it was small.”
“You made it large again,” she said, referring to the generations of family that had assembled — in the Broadway theater and again over Thanksgiving weekend. “Look at this room.”
Pictured on her 90th birthday in 2017, Fini Konstat now has three children, ten grandchildren and twenty great-grandchildren. (Courtesy)
There was a coda for the family after the curtain went down. The day after the show, the family wanted to see the 1907 “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” one of Gustav Klimt’s most famous paintings, which currently hangs at the Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side. A version of the portrait’s true story — how a painting of a socialite from a prominent Viennese Jewish family was looted by the Nazis and the family’s efforts to get it back — features in the plot of “Leopoldstadt.”
The gallery, however, was closed on the only day the family could visit. After a call to the management at the gallery, which showcases the German and Austrian art collections of Jewish philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder, the gallery’s director arranged a private tour.
“It felt like we were in a puzzle and everything was finally coming together,” said Akers. “It was an emotional, emotional time.”
When the week was over and the emotions were spent, Konstat and the Akers returned home with a reignited passion for their family story. But there was yet another twist: In addition to the whirlwind trip Levin planned for her grandparents and for Mimi, she had been undergoing the laborious process of applying for Austrian citizenship. Six members in Konstat’s large family have undertaken the process over the last two years.
“Part of the motivation was knowing Mimi’s story, and knowing that she survived because her mother had citizenship in Turkey,” Levin said. “That story was just inspirational to me, knowing that dual citizenship was what saved our family.” She convinced her brother and mother to apply for Austrian citizenship as well.
The day after her grandmother and great-grandmother left New York, Levin called them with news from her small apartment in Manhattan: An Austrian passport had arrived in the mail. The curtain was rising on another act.
Konstat was surprised at how interested her family was in getting Austrian citizenship. “I feel very good,” she said. “I’m very happy.”
“Does it make you emotional?” Levin asked her during the Zoom call with the New York Jewish Week.
“It does — of course it does. I used to love Austria,” she said. “I was sad to leave. I was disappointed. We never thought of coming back. I was happy to be able to escape. Thank God we made it out of hell.”
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His family was forced to sell their precious Pissarro painting before fleeing Nazi Germany; will he finally see justice?
It has been more than four years since I first reported on the looted art case regarding the Camille Pissarro painting, “Rue Saint-Honoré, Apres Midi, Effet de Pluie,” in The Forward. The painting is part of a series the Jewish artist painted from the safety of his hotel room in Paris at the height of the Dreyfus Affair in France.
The scandal, sparked by the false conviction of a Jewish army office tore French society apart and brought to light the country’s deep antisemitism. “Rue Saint-Honoré” is both an important work of Impressionism and a testament to historical events. If recovered, it may even break records at auction, how rare a Pissarro cityscape comes on the market, and how robust the fine art auction industry is at present. “The painting could “easily break the hundred-million-dollar mark at auction, following its recovery,” says historian and looted art expert, Jonathan Petropoulos.
The case of this rediscovered Pissarro painting captured my imagination from an aesthetic, legal, and storytelling perspective. It is a saga that has it all — art, war, robber barons, and more — and forces everyone who encounters it to reckon with fundamental questions on morality and humanity — from both a personal and historical perspective.
The case has been in the public consciousness for far longer than my own connection to it, however. In 1939, just prior to the onset of World War II, Lilly Cassirer — who inherited Rue St. Honoré through her husband, a member of a renowned family of cultural patrons in Germany — was forced to sell the painting under duress in order to flee Nazi Germany.
Sixty years later, in December of 1999, Lilly’s heirs discovered that the Pissarro had not been lost or destroyed in the war. In fact, it had resurfaced at the new Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, a collection belonging to the Kingdom of Spain acquired directly from the Thyssen Steel family, which had financed Hitler’s early rise to power.
The rediscovery kicked off an Odyssean legal journey up and down the federal courts in California, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington twice, and back. Now, another ruling is expected from the Federal District Court in Los Angeles this spring, on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has asked the district court to issue a new ruling in light of a new California law regarding stolen and Holocaust-looted art. For its part, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum maintains that it is the legitimate owner of the painting and that “there were no indications of bad faith in the acquisition of the painting.”
A separate, concurrent effort is underway in Congress to update the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 (HEAR Act), a Federal law that enabled Nazi-looted art claims to be submitted within six years of discovery of a work of art, thereby supplanting any state statute of limitations. The law was intended to expire after ten years, but given the enormous amount of looted art still to be found, the proposed update would remove the sunset clause, as well as dismiss defenses not directly related to the merits of the cases. The new act specifically cites this Pissarro painting and the legal case to recover it, seeking to prevent other looted art claims from facing a similar, protracted legal battle. The bill already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in a unanimous vote and is on the docket for a vote in the House of Representatives.
On the eve of two significant moments in the adjudication of Nazi-looted art, I sat down with David Cassirer, Lilly’s last living heir, and Sam Dubbin, one of his lawyers working on the case.
David, not long from now, there will be a new court decision on the long running case to restitute your family’s Pissarro painting “Rue Saint-Honoré, Apres Midi, Effet de Pluie,” which was a prized possession of your great-grandmother Lilly. What are you feeling at the moment?
David Cassirer: I’m pretty excited. It’s been such a long time since we started. This case gets exciting, and then it slows down. This is one of those exciting moments. There’s a lot going on, and we’re feeling pretty confident that we’re close to a recovery, after finding the painting more than twenty-six years ago
And what about you, Sam, how are you feeling?
Sam Dubbin: That’s a great question, because in my profession, you get optimistic, and then you get deflated, and sometimes the deflation takes a long time to get over. But deep down, I’m feeling optimistic, like this could really happen. And the moments when I feel lucky that it’s happening, I say to myself, “That’s ridiculous. It’s so long overdue.” What should have been done, should have been done so long ago. If the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum had given it back when Claude asked for it in 2000, he would have had ten years to enjoy it, to show it to people, to donate it. And it would have been a magnificent event.
This painting is important within the oeuvre of Pissarro’s work, but also historically in connection with the Dreyfus affair. Can you elaborate on its cultural and historical importance?
Dubbin: Pissarro painted this painting from the second floor of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre during the height of the Dreyfus Affair, when he literally feared for his life. He could not be seen on the streets of Paris because the antisemitism was so intense, and it’s considered one of the great works of the Impressionist movement. And so when you think about its origin during the Dreyfus Affair, then being looted by the Nazis during the preeminent human rights war crime in history, and now not being returned by the Kingdom of Spain, it’s just such an egregious, arrogant violation of decency and humanity.
And for you David, from a personal standpoint, what does the painting mean to you?
Cassirer: One of the things I like about the case is that there has been so much extraordinary publicity and interest by the public and by the press that it kind of reconnected the dots between the Impressionists and my family. My father would be very proud to read about the fact that his cousins Paul and Bruno, had championed the Impressionists and responsible for some of their success. There’s a new exhibition that’s starting soon in Berlin all about Paul Cassirer. It’s exciting to see this. It’s exciting in light of all the antisemitism that we’ve seen and the resurgence of it lately, to have some good news about Jewish contributions to culture, not to mention that Pissarro himself was Jewish. I’m delighted when I read stuff that starts to put in perspective this whole concept of our role in culture. It’s not the only thing Jewish people do, but it’s a big part of our culture.
I’d be very happy on behalf of the family and our friends to win the case, but it’s equally important that the case stands for something. And my father would feel that in his bones, especially since he really was there in the Holocaust and watched his family wiped out, watched their fortunes wiped out, watched most of his relatives sent off to the camps and so on. So, he felt it on a level I can only empathize with. It’s different if you’re there at a detention camp in the desert outside of Casablanca, and you’re dying of typhoid fever because there’s no running water and there’s no toilets. So luckily, he was young and strong and came back and survived and got here during the war. And of course, he went in to try to enlist. [The Americans] threw him out. “We’re not taking any Germans. Are you crazy?” He was very disappointed that he couldn’t join up and fight the Nazis.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2022 that California law should apply in this case, which was a big victory. But then the appellate court ruled against you, once again. What’s at stake with the next court decision?
Cassirer: I badly need this case to come out right, not just for the family. It’s a very important precedent. My father would have wanted people to be able to cite, to point to Cassirer v. Spain, Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza. That’s a big deal. We want people to be able to rely on that precedent all over the country and maybe in other countries as well, so I’m watching for that. It isn’t just California law versus Spain, it’s American law versus Spain. Generally speaking, throughout the country, the rule would be that you never acquire good title to stolen stuff. That’s the bigger picture here. The Supreme Court ruling meant that we are going to use good old American law to decide this thing ultimately.
Dubbin: By the way, Spanish law is an outlier. Even in other European countries, you cannot acquire good title even after the passage of time, if you take it in bad faith. Even countries like Germany, France, Netherlands, and Switzerland. Only Spain allows you to get good title after six years of adverse possession if you acquired something in bad faith.
It feels like a case in which, hopefully, common sense and morality can align. I think oftentimes, when the public thinks about the law, there’s sometimes a frustration that can arise, because cases are not always litigated based on what the public thinks is the logical, morally correct outcome. But hopefully, from what you’re saying, this could be one of those cases. David, what have been some of the positive things that have come out of this battle?
Cassirer: Lots of great stuff although it’s been difficult to wait so long and to watch my immediate family pass away in the interim. And as you can see, I’m not getting any younger here. (David is 71). It’s been a long, hard slog. The support from non-Jews has been extraordinary. We would expect, and we did receive, endless support from Jewish organizations and Jewish individuals. It’s been amazing, however, how much support we’ve had from day one in the press and in the public and in government, et cetera. I’ve been very heartened by the fact that we’ve had so much support from people “without a dog in the race,” so to speak, beyond the Jewish community.
I’ve also been very heartened in recent years with Sam’s extraordinary success working with legislatures, both in California and in Washington, and that the support isn’t just from one side or the other. It’s amazingly bipartisan. People who don’t even talk to each other gladly work together on these bills, sponsor these bills, and fend off anyone trying to undo it. Even though we haven’t won yet, we have won many battles along the way.
David, what advice would you give to other families who may be pursuing cases? What do you hope people take away from your experience?
Cassirer: That’s a good question. Assuming that we’re ultimately successful, which I’m still pretty confident with Sam’s help and this extraordinary team that we’ve managed to assemble, that we are going to win this thing. People should be encouraged, in a meta sense, that it’s worth fighting for stuff that’s important, even if the odds are long, even if other people might not be successful at it. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and you shouldn’t stick with it. I’ve been in the case twenty-six years and counting. If you’re tough enough and dedicated enough and you figure out a way to surround yourself with talented, committed people, there’s very little that can’t be accomplished in this country and in other countries as well. I think for me, that’s a pretty big takeaway.
You’ve just struck me that you’re talking about the American dream.
Cassirer: Yes! My father told me that the greatest day he ever had was becoming an American citizen. After what he had been through and being stateless, having had his government turn against him, it’s interesting that, given his extraordinary life, the greatest day of his life to him was when he became a naturalized citizen; because, to him, that was the American dream.
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Amid antisemitic attacks, Trump has forced an impossible choice on American synagogues
The Thursday attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, did not occur in a vacuum.
In the past few months, shots were fired at three congregations in Toronto; an explosion rocked a synagogue in Belgium; and an arsonist caused massive damage to Beth Israel Congregation in Mississippi. Antisemitic incidents in the United States have reached historic highs. The threat is real, it is escalating, and American Jews know it.
Which is why the federal government’s decision to use this moment in history to force Jewish communities to choose between their own safety and that of immigrants is so unforgivable.
That choice is being created as part of the government’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which under President Donald Trump has instituted troubling new changes.
The program was established in 2004 to help houses of worship pay for cameras, barriers, armed guards and alarm systems, then expanded after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre in 2018. It has perhaps never mattered more than it does right now. It provides, quite literally, life-saving money. The demand for grants vastly outpaces the supply, with thousands of organizations competing for a fraction of the security funds they need.
Now, those funds come with new strings attached.
Beginning in 2025, the Department of Homeland Security attached sweeping ideological conditions to new security grants. Recipients of new awards must cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, and must also agree not to “operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, DEIA, or discriminatory equity ideology.” They additionally must not run any aid program which “benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration.”
When asked to clarify what those conditions mean in practice — whether a synagogue that declares itself a sanctuary for refugees would be disqualified, or whether a congregation offering programming for Jews of color or LGBTQ+ Jews would run afoul of the anti-DEI clause — the federal government’s answer has been months of contradictory guidance and confusion.
The terrifying potential consequences of that muddle were thrown into sharp relief by Thursday’s attack.
A man armed with a rifle rammed his truck through the doors of Temple Israel, driving down a hallway before being killed by the synagogue’s security staff. Thankfully, no congregants were hurt, and the children in the preschool run by the synagogue all made it home safely.
Many congregations do not have the independent resources to support security protocols as effective as Temple Israel’s proved to be. Instead, they rely on the government to help bridge the gap.
But under Trump’s second administration, security funding — the money that pays for the tools that may one day save lives — is now a lever to use to force political compliance.
This is of particular significance for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish denomination in the U.S. and that to which Temple Israel belongs. The movement’s commitment to welcoming the stranger, hachnasat orchim — stemming from the commandment to love the stranger, repeated no fewer than 36 times in the Torah — is core to its identity. It is no coincidence that many Reform congregations have declared themselves sanctuaries for refugees.
And it’s of particular significance because antisemitic violence is often linked to anti-immigrant sentiment. The deadliest act of antisemitic violence in U.S. history, the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, was motivated by hatred toward immigrants, and toward Jewish programs that aid them.
The Trump administration’s demand that liberal American Jews choose between a foundational Jewish value and basic safety from violence is heartbreaking. One anonymous rabbi described the dilemma with devastating clarity to JTA: “Money is being given to us on condition that we violate a specific mitzvah. I don’t see how we can possibly accept that money.”
Rabbi Jill Maderer in Philadelphia put it even more bluntly, saying “Jewish safety requires inclusive democracy and inclusive democracy requires Jewish safety. We do not comply so we will not apply.”
These are communities under armed threat — as Thursday clearly reminded us — forced to choose between their physical safety and their moral integrity. That is a choice that no American religious community should ever have to make. The government’s obligation to protect its citizens, especially its most targeted minorities, must not come with an ideological price tag.
What makes this especially galling is the timing. A government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, born out of a political standoff over immigration enforcement, is currently halting the review of security grant applications. Synagogues that applied for funding months ago are waiting for approvals that may not come.
They are waiting, in many cases, to find out whether the security upgrades that might have made the difference under circumstances like those that unfolded in Michigan will be funded or not.
There is a word for demanding that a persecuted minority community abandon its values in exchange for protection: extortion. The Trump administration would no doubt dispute that framing. After all, the administration claims to care deeply about Jewish safety. Thursday’s attack makes clear that it is not enough for the administration to make that claim; it must prove its commitment through action.
It must remove the political conditions from the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. It must let houses of worship be what they are: sanctuaries, not instruments of federal policy.
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‘For As Long As Necessary’: Katz Says Campaign Against Iran Entering Decisive Stage
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz and his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias make statements to the press, at the Ministry of Defense in Athens Greece, Jan. 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
i24 News – Israel Katz said Saturday that the confrontation with Iran had entered a “decisive phase,” as US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets continued and regional tensions escalated.
Speaking after a security assessment at Israel’s defense headquarters alongside Eyal Zamir, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, and senior military and intelligence officials, the Israeli defense minister said the campaign against the Islamic Republic would continue “for as long as necessary.”
“The global and regional struggle against Iran, led by American President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is intensifying and entering its decisive phase,” Katz said.
Katz also praised US strikes on Kharg Island, a key Iranian oil hub, describing them as a “severe blow” to the Iranian regime. He said the attacks were an appropriate response to Iranian threats against the strategic Strait of Hormuz and to what he called Tehran’s attempts to pressure the international community.
At the same time, Katz said the Israeli Air Force was continuing a “powerful wave of attacks” against targets in Tehran and other parts of Iran.
He accused the Iranian leadership of using “regional and global terrorism” and strategic blackmail in an effort to deter Israel and the United States from pursuing their military campaign, warning that such actions would be met with a “strong and uncompromising response.”
Katz added that the outcome of the conflict would ultimately depend on the Iranian population. “Only the Iranian people can put an end to this situation through a determined struggle, until the overthrow of the terrorist regime and the salvation of Iran,” he said.
According to the minister, the confrontation now pits the Iranian regime’s determination to survive against growing military pressure from Israel and its allies.