Playwright / Director’s Statement
My life’s work has been that of a storyteller, specifically, as a playwright. And plays are meant to teach by illuminating man’s relationship to the Gods, to man, and to himself. Working on the "Karski" project meant I had to delve into a history the Soviets tried to hide and a history that was an embarrassment to certain forces on the Allied side of WWII. The job of retrieval of history was, for me, heavy lifting, and transmitting this historical event was cathartic. I want the play to engage the audience and, like Jan Karski, I await the audience’s reactions to his question: "Now that you know the story, what are you going to do about it?"
First, here’s a toast to used bookstores. It’s because of my passion for such stores that I came upon a galley proof of a book called Letters to Freya—Letters from a Young German Aristocrat to His Wife, 1939-1945. That aristocrat was Helmuth James von Moltke and that riveting collection of letters was the catalyst for this project. Events were further set in motion when, in 1992, at a meeting of the Belmont German-Jewish dialogue group, I learned that a group member I had known as Veronica Jochum was actually Veronica Jochum von Moltke, sister-in-law to Freya. An introduction to Freya followed, and all the rest flowed from that first meeting with Freya. For me, A Journey to Kreisau is not so much a story of resistance to Hitler as it is a narrative of a young couple and their circle of friends, identifying and strengthening the moral center of their universe. Their resistance path was taken in spite of letha consequences from the Nazis who feared, quite rightly, a threat to the Third Reich’s stranglehold on Germany and the rest of Europe. Ultimately, it was the von Moltkes’ vision that endured. And that victory of moral strength brings honor to the civilization that we now claim as our legacy.
I wish to personally acknowledge and thank Jan Karski (and his 1944 book, Story of A Secret State) and E. Thomas Wood, who co-authored, with Stanislaw M. Jankowski, Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust (1994). Both books contain an infinite amount of fascinating detail that no play could ever present on stage. I can only hope that my work points us not just to the past, but to a better world ahead.
-Marc P. Smith