staring into the abyss

I don't know what to do.

Actually I know what to do, and I will do it, but I just have to get these fears out of my system.

It's no secret to those who know me that I have a very (un)healthy interest in the Holocaust. It's just so fascinating, I don't understand how something like that could happen the way it happened. It just blows my mind, especially if you look at the intricacies of how it happened.

But this post is not about that. I don't even really want to discuss it because that isn't even what the play is about.

This is about children.

There's a Polish doctor, Janusz Korczak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Korczak) who was taken into the Warsaw Ghetto with a whole mess of Jewish orphans under his care. Eventually they were liquidated to Treblinka, where he and the children more likely than not died in the chambers. His story is fascinating, and I was struck by this man from the time I took History of the Holocaust when I was at Black Hawk, all the way back in 2001. Yes, this man has stayed with me for eight years, and I still plan to write a play about him. And I've tried. I've come up with a couple scenes, but the play wouldn't budge any further.

A couple months ago, I ran across a show on the History Channel about the Goebbels' children (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goebbels_children). This was totally fascinating as well. It looked like the six children who were in the Fuhrerbunker during the last days and who were eventually murdered with cynanide by their own mother, Magda, who could not imagine a life for her children beyond the Reich, may not have known precisely what was happening to their world or to them. I am particularly fascinated by Hedwig 'Hedda' Goebbels, the almost 7 year old. I see writing a play from her point of view.

Now, I do realize, children are much smarter than they give us credit for, and not only do they often know when something is wrong, but they often find any way possible to blame themselves, so no one has to mention that. I was a child once, with sick parents.

What fascinates me is what happened to the innocent children of the Holocaust, on both sides of the issue.

And the wheels in my brain are turning, and I both love and abhor the direction they are going. Can I put 'Aryan' children and Jewish in the same play? They both suffered the same fate, and if I focus more on them being children rather than 'Aryan' and 'Jewish' it might work.

But I don't know. The more I think about it, the more scared I get about doing this, but the more it pulls me. Hedda and the Good Doctor, they're both pulling on me.

Also, I just looked back at the last entry I wrote with these two tags and I wrote pretty much the same exact entry a little over two months ago. Oops.

The point to this is, I am going to see where Hedda and the Good Doctor, and King Matt, I want to see where they are going to take me. It's going to be quite an adventure.