Public and Private, A Playwright's Journey
Born in the Great Depression, Marc P. Smith has lived through the periods of the second world war, the cold war, the civil rights movement in the U.S., Viet Nam, and the current universe of militant extremists. His stories present the amazing journey of an ordinary man traveling through world-changing events in search of a moral compass as he learns to navigate his life.
One remarkable focus of this episodic journey has been his meeting with Countess Freya von Moltke, widow of Count Helmuth James von Moltke. Helmuth James was leader of the famous ‘Kreisau Circle,’ the name given by the Gestapo to the resistance group that tried to blow up Hitler in his bunker on July 20, 1944. Von Moltke was executed by the Nazis on January 23, 1945; he had the distinction of being the only known German to be tried and executed because he put loyalty to Christ above loyalty to the Fuhrer. His widow, now in her 90s, escaped to the U.S., and has worked with Smith as a resource for his play, “A Journey to Kreisau,” illuminating the incredible anti-Nazi resistance group that almost brought a halt to World War II. Here is a Jewish writer who brings this story, and his mission of reconciliation, to the lecture circuit. The audience is treated to a gripping tale of reconciliation, surprising family secrets, and a close-up confrontation with the horrors of Hitler’s Third Reich.