The Berlin Diaries

In this moving combination of docudrama and biography, Oregon Book Award-winning playwright Andrea Stolowitz retraces the path of her great-grandfather, Max, a German Jew who escaped to New York City in 1939. Following stories across time, space and distant family connections, Andrea Stolowitz traces the path of her great-grandfather, Max, a German Jew who escaped to New York City in 1939. Though Max’s story was “verschollen,” or lost, Stolowitz uses his journal as a guide, winding her way across continents and decades in a moving combination of docudrama and biography in which two actors play 14 characters. Who was Max Cohnreich? What inheritance did he leave to his distant relative? What was in the letters that he hoped she would one day read? These questions, and more, are answered in this moving tribute to the familial bonds that survive even the most horrifying events.