Playwrights Take Aim at Revisionism

The Institute's work, and the growing impact of Holocaust revisionism, are under fire in two new theatrical productions.

“Blue Light,” a play by Jewish novelist Cynthia Ozick, is described in the Detroit Jewish News, February 3, as a new play that “shines a light on those who assert the Holocaust never happened; it is beacon of bravery, the writer armed for the battle with truths against Holocaust bashers…. ” The play “is not trying to convert the converted,” says Ozick, but is instead meant “for non-Jews.” Prominent Hollywood film director Sidney Lumet is working with Ozick to bring “Blue Light” to the Broadway stage with a “stellar cast” of Oscar-award actors.

“Denial,” an anti-revisionist play by Jewish writer Peter Sagal, has premiered at the South Coast Repertory theater in Costa Mesa, California. In a Los Angeles Times interview (March 13), Sagal “pointed out that the Institute for Historical Review is just down the road in Newport Beach, where it serves as a clearinghouse for the notion that the Holocaust never occurred.” Among the five characters in his play, Sagal “focuses on a revisionist 'very loosely based' on a Northwestern University engineering professor,” a reference to Dr. Arthur Butz, author of The Hoax ofthe Twentieth Century.