Tom Stoppard’s much-acclaimed Leopoldstadt tells the story of a Viennese Jewish family as it contends with assimilation, intermarriage, anti-Semitism, and, eventually the Holocaust. Since writing it, Stoppard reports having lost whatever faith he might have had in the “universal spirit” of humanity:
I’m reading Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 by Ian Black. I had reached 1953 when at midnight a text pinged in from an old friend: “Who will cross the street when we pass? Who will hide us in the attic?”
Who, me? When did it come to this? I remember a hum in Britain about “anti-Semitism in the Labor Party” when I was writing my play about a Viennese Jewish family who perished in the Holocaust, but there was nothing “timely” about Leopoldstadt when it opened in London nearly four years ago. Anti-Semitism was not a hot topic. When elderly Jews, often weeping, thanked me for “telling our story,” I felt a bit surprised that the story still needed telling. But they knew something I didn’t. By the time the play moved to New York in September 2022, anti-Semitism was the hook for every interviewer, and by the end of the run last July there were two extra security men patrolling the theater.
Six months later and 3,000 miles nearer home, the security guard at shul advised my friend to hide her Star of David if she was going to the West End.
Perhaps then, Leopoldstadt was much more timely than Stoppard admits, and he and many others should have paid more attention to anti-Semitism in the Labor party. In her review for Mosaic, Sarah Rindner observed that Leopoldstadt was in a sense “even more Zionist a play” than Theodor Herzl’s The New Ghetto, but Stoppard might not have seen it that way. Literary critics can add this episode to the eternal debate about whether authors are the best interpreters of their own work. In the meantime, let’s hope someone recommends Stoppard a more evenhanded history than the late Ian Black’s. I suggest he start here.
Read more on Spectator: https://thespectator.com/topic/have-talk-antisemitism-holocaust-tom-stoppard/