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Flirting with danger: A play based on the true story of 3 Dutch women who lured Nazis to their deaths premieres in NYC
(New York Jewish Week) — During World War II, three young women formed a small legion of the Dutch underground resistance, fighting Nazis with the most powerful weapons at their disposal: their youth, their gender and their sexuality.
They were sisters Freddie and Truus Oversteegen and Hannie Schaft, who, in 1940 were 14, 16 and 20, respectively. While they, along with other resistance fighters, used dynamite to destroy bridges and railroads, and helped hide Jewish children and smuggled Jews out of the country, the very young women also would go to bars and pick up Nazi soldiers. They would ask the men to go for a walk in the forest under the pretense of romance or sex — and then shoot and kill them. Their story was told in a 2019 book, “Seducing and Killing Nazis,” by the Dutch author and activist Sophie Poldermans.
Now, a new play based on their actions, “The Moss Maidens,” is one of eight plays selected from 300 submissions showing at the SheNYC Festival at the Connelly Theater (220 East 4th St.) this week.
“In my communities, both young women and Jewish people, I feel like there’s a lot of rage right now,” New York-based playwright S. Dylan Zwickel, 30, told the New York Jewish Week. “I think it will be both exciting and cathartic for people to get to see these girls raging and behaving badly and fighting systems that don’t work for them, and don’t work for people they care about, on stage.”
“The Moss Maidens” has already sold out three performances at the annual festival, which features plays written and created by people of “marginalized genders,” including ciswomen, trans and non-binary people. SheNYC chooses its submissions based on representation and how well its themes grapple with current events, Eh-den Perlove, one of the festival’s organizers said.
Due to the demand for “The Moss Maidens,” a fourth performance has been added, a first in the festival’s eight-year history. “Part of the reason ‘The Moss Maidens’ has resonated so much is that we’re having renewed discussions around white supremacy,” Perlove said. “It’s always been there, but it’s so relevant to how we’re kind of reacting in our day-to-day, to white supremacy, to Nazism, to neo-Nazism. It helps us ask ourselves, as a group who are maybe being persecuted or who see persecution, ‘What can you do to kind of stand up against that?’”
Ahead of the play’s opening on Wednesday, the New York Jewish Week caught up with Zwickel to discuss her inspiration for the show and why she felt the story was so relevant and necessary to tell.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
S. Dylan Zwickel is the Jewish playwright of “The Moss Maidens.” (Yekaterina Gyadu, design by Grace Yagel)
What was the inspiration for this play?
The play is based on a true story of the young Dutch women that did this, which was my initial impetus for writing the show. In addition to doing all of this active resistance work by actually murdering Nazis, one of them was hiding Jews in her home. I first read about it a few years ago in a random article — I don’t even remember where — and as soon as I read it, I was like, “I have to tell this story.” Then I read a great book about these girls: “Seducing and Killing Nazis,” which is written from several firsthand accounts of what happened. The author had access to a lot of people who knew them, and even some of the women themselves — two that lived to be 92 and died in 2016 and 2018, which is really remarkable.
I ultimately decided not to make my story exactly that of the true story and just made my play inspired by that story. That book provided great research so I could come up with my own characters and plot based on their experience; it was really exciting having the creative license of making them my own characters, and being able to sort of dive into aspects of it that may not have been included in the original story. But there’s always that layer there that people really did make this choice. People really did do these things.
Why is it important to tell this story in 2023?
There is a certain catharsis getting to watch these young girls fight back against the people who feel that way [about Jews]. For me, amidst the rising tides of antisemitism that are happening right now, it feels very easy to react by wanting to remember how badly things have gone in the past. I do think that is extremely important, but it’s also important to think about how that instinct can be fought. The story that, as a Jewish person, you’re expected to tell about World War II, is details of the Holocaust and people suffering. It’s so important to remember all of that, but I also needed the catharsis of people fighting back. I would rather write about and live in this world of people killing Nazis rather than my people being killed. That’s what I wanted to focus on.
The story is still so relevant. A couple of weeks ago, I was on my way to see “Camelot” at Lincoln Center and there was this guy shouting antisemitic conspiracies and he had posters with antisemitic cartoons. I went into rehearsal the next day, and there’s a line in the play where a Nazi is talking about the Final Solution. I got so nauseous that I had to leave the room — having just seen this guy on the street the day before, I became so aware that there are still people who feel this way and it’s so much closer than we think.
One of the books that I read for research, “The Diary Keepers” by Nina Siegal, uses testimony from the thousands of diary entries written in the Netherlands during World War II. Siegal combed through them, translated them and published a book using these diaries. She included perspectives of Jews, perspectives of resistance fighters, perspectives of citizens who were not involved at all and just kept our heads down — which was most people — and also perspectives of Nazis and Nazi collaborators. It was really interesting reading that, especially reading about the beginning of the war and just feeling how close we are to how it did start. It was alarming, but also enlightening.
Why is it important to give these young Dutch women a voice?
Pretty much all of my writing features young women. That is an area of focus for me. I think of everything that I write as “a superhero origin story.” It’s all about girls stepping into their power. That’s true across everything I write, but this is kind of the best and biggest example of it, which is one of the reasons I’ve so enjoyed working on it — it just feels like the most major, distilled and exciting version of that.
It is just so remarkable that during that time there were these girls who, despite everything they were being told by society, had the awareness to make a different choice. There’s a lot of discussion in the play about the choice to be doing this and how easy it would have been to make a different choice. I hope that this play can help inspire young women to ask themselves, “Could I be one of these girls? Is this how I would respond in a situation like this?”
As you were writing and researching the play, was there anything unexpected that you learned about yourself or about the story?
Well, it was interesting because I initially wasn’t thinking of the play as that Jewish because the characters are not Jewish — one is half-Jewish. I didn’t want to make any of them Jewish “just because,” for two reasons. One, historically, they would have had to either be in hiding or have escaped already, so they wouldn’t have been able to be doing the activities they were doing. The other reason is I was really interested in the idea of these girls fighting to protect not themselves but other people. For the most part, the girls say they don’t even know any Jews, so they’re really not fighting for any friends of theirs, just for belief in the rights and humanity of all people.
The more we’ve worked on it, the more I’ve realized how Jewish the sense of morality and the cultural values in the play are. Even though these are not written as Jewish girls, they bear a lot of resemblance to Jewish girls and women that I know. I’ve written them as loud and brave and bold and opinionated — all of these things that I associate as being Jewish cultural values. So I think even though I didn’t write them as Jewish characters, I was surprised to discover how much of my own Jewish culture embedded itself in there anyway.
“The Moss Maidens” will be performed at the Connelly Theater (220 East 4th St.) four times this week. A digital version of the show will be available for purchase for $5 and will be available to stream from August 4-6. Find tickets and information about the SheNYC Festival here.
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The post Flirting with danger: A play based on the true story of 3 Dutch women who lured Nazis to their deaths premieres in NYC appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Rubio Condemns Mass Killings of Alawites in Syria, Says US Stands With Country’s Minority Communities
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday denounced the mass killing of more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians from the Alawite minority group, in Syria, calling on the newly installed Syrian government to hold the perpetrators “accountable” for the massacres.
“The United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days,” Rubio said in a statement. “The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families. Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.”
In a series of clashes beginning on Thursday, fighters allied with the new Syrian government carried out mass executions of Alawite Muslim civilians in the coastal towns of Latakia and Tartus. According to Syria’s interior ministry, the pro-government fighters conducted “sweeping operations” in the towns to dismantle the remaining “remnants” of the regime of former President Bashaar al-Assad, targeting primarily adult men.
According to Syrian officials, the fighting started when a group of Alawite fighters loyal to Assad killed their forces in a premeditated attack.
The ensuing mass killing of Alawites, who comprise roughly 10 percent of the Syrian population, highlights growing concerns over the safety of minority groups in the country.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed Sharaa decried the massacres, claiming they undermined his efforts to unite the country and vowing to seek retribution for the violence.
“Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” Sharaa told Reuters. “We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us.”
In late January, Sharaa became Syria’s transitional president after leading a rebel campaign that ousted Assad, whose decades-long Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.
The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz denounced the Syrian president as a “terrorist” who “switched his robe for a suit and presented a moderate face.”
“Now he’s taken off the mask and exposed his true face: A jihadist terrorist of the al-Qaeda school who is committing horrifying acts against a civilian population,” Katz said in a statement. “Israel will defend itself against any threat from Syria.”
Following Assad’s fall in December, Israel moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state. The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Syria’s new government has called for Israel to withdraw its forces.
Alawite leaders in Syria have also issued a statement to Israel, calling on the Jewish state to deploy forces in the country to protect its minority civilians.
“Following the fall of Assad’s regime, and after the massacres that took place in Alawite areas against our people, we call on the Israeli government to provide protection, assistance, and support,” the leaders wrote, according to i24 News.
The leaders lamented that “the world is silent about the massacres happening in Syria” and that if the Jewish state offered help, the Alawite Muslims “will be your most loyal and good friends.”
The post Rubio Condemns Mass Killings of Alawites in Syria, Says US Stands With Country’s Minority Communities first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Inflection Point’: UCLA Announces Initiative to Combat Antisemitism
Anti-Israel protesters set up camp on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA on April 25, 2024. Photo: Alberto Sibaja via Reuters Connect.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) announced on Monday an “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism,” a move that follows a series of incidents which have fueled allegations that the campus has become a hub of anti-Jewish discrimination.
“With honest reflection, it is clear that while we have made progress in addressing antisemitism, we have more to do in our shared goal of eradicating it in its entirety,” UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk said in a statement. “Through this initiative, UCLA will implement recommendations of the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.”
He continued, “These recommendations include: enhancing relevant training and education, improving the complaint system, assuring enforcement of current and new laws and polices, and cooperating with stakeholders.”
“This is an opportunity for UCLA to rise to the challenge of being an exemplary university,” Frenk concluded.
The Initiative to Combat Antisemitism is the second stage of a process begun by UCLA when it created an antisemitism task force in February 2024. Commissioned to study the problem and issue recommendations, the task force last year issued a report which noted, among other things, that two-thirds of Jewish UCLA students believe that antisemitism on the campus “is a problem or a serious problem,” and a higher share of them, 70 percent, attributed the atmosphere of hatred to the university’s decision to allow a “Gaza encampment” protest during the final days of the 2023-2024 spring semester.
That decision proved fateful, as it prompted a lawsuit accusing UCLA of fostering a discriminatory learning environment. Filed by several students, the complaint argued that the encampment was a source of antisemitism from the moment pro-Hamas agitators installed it. Students there chanted “death to the Jews,” the complaint recounted, set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.
Alleging that UCLA refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, the complaint charged that administrators put on a “remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality,” and in doing so, allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property, violating its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.
In addition to students, university officials have also been targeted by pro-Hamas activists — as The Algemeiner has previously reported.
On Feb. 5 some 50 members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the allied campus group Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine amassed on the property of Jay Sures — a Jewish member of the Board of Regents, the governing body for the University of California (UC) system — and threatened that he must “divest now or pay.” As part of the demonstration, the students imprinted their hands, which had been submerged in red paint to symbolize the spilling of blood, all over Sures’ garage door and cordoned the area with caution tape.
The behavior crossed the line, Frenk said in an email sent to the entire student body, and he suspended both groups while commissioning the school’s Office of Student Conduct to complete a thorough investigation into the incident. Defying the disciplinary measures, an estimated 150 people — including members of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), among other anti-Israel groups — the next day marched through the campus demanding that SJP’s punishment be repealed while arguing it is they and not Sures who are victims of racism.
“If you look at who actually experienced violence, it’s overwhelming our own students, and that was the fault of our university administration” Michael Chwe, a professor of political science and member of FJP, was quoted by The Daily Bruin as saying. “For them to be claiming that our students are violent is completely backward.”
That same month, a Jewish faculty group at the university issued an open letter calling attention to a slew of indignities to which they have been subjected in recent months. The missive enumerated a litany of falsehoods spread about Jews by a task force created to study anti-Arab bigotry on the campus — including that Jewish faculty have conspired to undermine academic freedom with “coordinated repression,” promoted the interests of conservative groups, and harmed minority students by opposing “racial justice.”
The group added that discrimination at the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) has wreaked demonstrable harm on Jewish students and faculty. Student clubs, it said, are denied recognition for arbitrary reasons; Jewish faculty whose ethnic backgrounds were previously unknown are purged from the payrolls upon being identified as Jews; and anyone who refuses to participate in anti-Zionist events is “intimidated” and pressured.
In Monday’s announcement, Frenk called for reforming UCLA’s culture to ensure that all are accepted, regardless of race, ethnicity, and creed.
“UCLA is at an inflection point,” he said. “Building on past efforts and lessons, we must now push ourselves to extinguish antisemitism, completely and definitively. The principles on which UCLA was founded — and which we continue to advance — point us toward a clear course of action: We must persevere in our fight to end hate, however it manifests itself.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Inflection Point’: UCLA Announces Initiative to Combat Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Connecticut Men Charged With Hate Crime for Vandalizing Menorah
Illustrative: A menorah knocked to the ground by an antisemitic vandal who attacked a Jewish educational center in eastern Moscow. Photo: SHAMIR.
Police in Guilford, Connecticut have arrested and charged Steven Prinz Jr., 25, and Troy Prinz, 22, for allegedly vandalizing a menorah set up for public display.
The menorah’s owner reported the damage to law enforcement on Jan. 13 and provided surveillance video of the Jan. 5 crime. The suspects hid their faces, one with a gas mask and the other with fabric, and knocked over the menorah before stomping it on the ground, breaking multiple parts. Before discovering the footage, the owner had originally reported that wind had knocked down the menorah.
The two brothers, who were arrested on Wednesday, face charges of second-degree intimidation based on bigotry or bias, second-degree conspiracy to commit intimidation based on bigotry or bias, first-degree criminal mischief, and first-degree conspiracy to commit criminal mischief. Police released both men after they posted $25,000 court-set bonds.
The Guilford Police Department’s Lt. Martina Jakober said in a statement that the investigation “involved significant cooperation between the police and members of our community in order to locate and preserve the essential evidence needed to properly identify these suspects.”
Jakober added that “the men and women of the Guilford Police Department wish to extend our deepest appreciation to all who live and work in the community” and that “our collective efforts, as the police and the community, ultimately resulted in their identification and arrest.”
Rabbi Yossi Yaffe, director for Chabad-Lubavitch of the Shoreline which had set up the menorah, released a statement following the arrests.
“This aberration does not represent the Guilford community. For 25 years, Chabad of the Shoreline’s menorah has illuminated Guilford without incident,” Yaffe stated. “Throughout the years, many residents from different faith communities and from across the political spectrum have expressed their appreciation and pride in having a menorah on the Guilford town green. With G-d’s help, we will continue to share the menorah’s light for many years to come!”
Yaffe announced that the hate crime targeting the menorah had inspired the community to increase its efforts to promote the holiday, with plans to increase displays and distribution of menorahs next Hanukkah.
Jakober said that the police department intends “to reflect on this incident and continuously work to figure out an ever-strengthening partnership with the community.” She added that “together, we can be sure that acts of hate or bias have no place in Guilford.”
Last week, the legal system made further efforts to counter alleged hate crimes in New York and Florida.
In Manhattan on Thursday, prosecutors said that Utah man Luis Ramirez, 23, allegedly proclaimed himself “Hitler reincarnated,” threatened to kill “as many Jews as I killed in [World War II],” and targeted New York City’s Central Synagogue. The judge denied bail for Ramirez and required him to undergo a psychological evaluation.
Prosecutors said that Ramirez had shown signs of paranoia and delusion which included calling himself by the names of “biblical characters.” Court documents stated that Ramirez had been diagnosed as “schizophrenic, suffering from hallucinations, delusions, and not being connected to reality.” A military officer cadet training school had reportedly discharged Ramirez for psychological reasons. Photos from Ramirez’s court appearance show him grinning.
Ramirez faces as much as 15 years’ imprisonment for a terrorism charge. “He is now charged with significant terrorism and hate crime charges and was remanded into custody,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said. “Any form of antisemitism is despicable, and I want Manhattan’s Jewish community to know we are remaining extremely vigilant.”
The judge scheduled Ramirez’s next court appearance for March 20.
Meanwhile, in Florida on Wednesday, the Boynton Beach Police Department arrested Adam Elshazly, charging him with allegedly targeting his former employer with violent and antisemitic threats via texts on July 2, 2024. The messages included antisemitic images and threats of violent sexual abuse against the victim’s wife and daughter. The victim told police that he had hired Elshazly 10 years ago for a job and fired him three days later for poor performance, not to hear from him again until receiving the text messages.
Police charged Elshazly with a count of intimidation with prejudice while committing an offense and released him the next day following the posting of a $30,000 bond. A judge scheduled his arraignment for Thursday.
The post Connecticut Men Charged With Hate Crime for Vandalizing Menorah first appeared on Algemeiner.com.