Buchenwald explores man's hunger for power and the fight for something greater than the individual. Set in 1946, the show discloses the continued use of Nazi concentration camps as Soviet extermination camps for the Germans. Imprisoned by the Soviets, Nazi SS Colonel Max Richter reaches out to save the future of his young Soviet guard, Sasha Novsky. Buchenwald was inspired by playwright Cristina A. Bejan’s visit to the concentration camp in 2001 when she was a college student studying abroad in Germany. When she toured the camp, she saw the single prison cell “chalk chamber,” learned of the post-WWII Soviet use of the Nazi camps, and was shocked to learn that many Weimar residents lived in denial of the mass murder in the backyard. This new knowledge haunted her and one night back at Northwestern University Richter and Novsky’s story seized her, and the script for Buchenwald was born. Her senior year of college she produced and directed the play as a joint project within the university’s German and Theatre Departments. Fascism and Russian aggression are again at the forefront on the world stage. This play is a reminder of what is ultimately at risk for us all.
