The play Kindertransport by Diane Samuels, adapted by San Diego's High School of Jewish Studies drama teacher Terry Miller, provides one reason for being optimistic that the world will remember not only the statistics of the Holocaust— how many were murdered, how many were liberated — but the human emotions and ethical choices that were forced by the nazi policy of
genocide.

If students from past drama classes of the Agency for Jewish Education-sponsored high school can be assembled in time, another production of Kindertransport will be staged April 10 in connection with this region's Yom HaShoah observances. Whether or not a full- cast production can be mounted, students Sara Grossman and Adam Covalt, eighth graders respectively
at the Del Cerro and Carmel Valley campuses of the High School of Jewish Studies, will reprise some scenes April 14 during the Lawrence Family JCC's Holocaust remembrance ceremony, which begins at 2 p.m.

Based on the experiences of 10,000 Jewish children who were transported without their parents from Central Europe to England in 1938 and 1939, the story focuses on one family's decision to send their daughter to safety. The daughter feels so abandoned by her parents that, with the help of her foster parents in England, she forges for herself a non-Jewish identity and later
rejects her biological parents who come to find her. Years later, her own daughter learns the family secret and feels betrayed that her heredity had been hidden from her.

For Miller, a widowed mother of three children who also teaches drama at Pershing Junior High School, the subject matter of the play was riveting. "The idea of children being separated from their parents and being able to function so well, I found fascinating," she said. Similarly
thought-provoking was "the idea of parents being able to make that supreme sacrifice knowing that they probably wouldn't be able to see their children again."

Miller said while readying students at the HSJS Carmel Valley campus for a Dec. 18 production of the play, and students at the Del Cerro campus for a March 22 presentation, she kept wondering "what would I have done as a parent ... If I was the mother and I was clever enough to survive, because you had to be clever to survive in addition to being strong, what would I
have done? How would I have reacted?"

In the play, the parent (a father or mother, depending on who plays the part) comes after the war to England with two tickets for New York, only to be told by the daughter that she didn't wish to accompany her, that she had made her own life. 

"How would I have reacted?" Miller asks. "Would I have gone to New York (as the character in the play did) or would I have stayed in England to be near my child? I don¹t have the answer to that."

The HJSJS students similarly had to imagine what they would have done under such adverse circumstances. "I think as we progressed, they grew to appreciate what these kids went through," Miller said.

In one of the final scenes, the Kindertransport veteran tries to explain to her child that she wanted her to be shielded from all the ugliness she had encountered as a Jew in Germany. "The mother says 'I want you to remain the sweet English child I raised' and the child says, 'I can't, I can't,'"
Miller related. 

"The (HSJS) kids grew to appreciate that and I think they grew more doing this through a class called 'Be a Thespian' than they would have learned if they had a text," Miller said.

Miller had first seen the play when it was produced by the Full Circle Theatre Company of La Jolla, a production company combining the talents of students and teachers of La Jolla High School. Mickie Targum, principal of the High School for Jewish Studies, after hearing about the production, asked Miller whether she could help arrange for the play to be performed for
the high school kids.

Miller met with her daughter Amanda's teacher, Ann Boutelle, who had been involved in the Full Circle production, but learned that the cast already had scattered. At that point, Miller asked for the opportunity to teach the class at the High School for Jewish Studies, known popularly as Hebrew High.

She later prevailed on David Ross, a friend who serves as cultural arts director at Camp Ramah in Ojai, to compose some songs to insert at various parts of the play. "'The Kindertransport Song' tells the whole story of theplay, from the beginning to when the kids were united with the parents," she said.

What Miller describes as a "work in progress" may go through other evolutions. Having presented Kindertransport "in black" — with all characters wearing black outfits and without formal sets— Miller expresses the hope in the future that she and future classes will have more rehearsal time, a better space for rehearsals, and piano accompaniment -- rather than
taped music — for the songs.