Berman Center to mark 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht

	Claudia Stevens will perform her one-woman show about concentration camp prisoners who survived the Holocaust by singing and playing music for their Nazi oppressors.

The Philip and Muriel Berman Center for Jewish Studies at Lehigh University will commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht on Tuesday, November 11 with a performance of the internationally acclaimed musical drama, “An Evening with Madame F.”
The program, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Zoellner Arts Center’s Baker Hall.
This one-woman show, created and performed by Claudia Stevens, tells the stories of concentration camp prisoners who survived the Holocaust by singing and playing music for their Nazi oppressors. Adopting the persona of an elderly Holocaust survivor, Stevens uses music actually performed by the women inmates at Auschwitz.
She draws on first-hand accounts to depict the struggle and moral dilemma these women faced when they chose to do whatever they had to in order to live. As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, Stevens also meditates on the ethics of using the Holocaust as the subject for artistic expression.
Trained as a pianist, singer, musicologist and composer, Claudia Stevens holds degrees in music from Vassar College, the University of California at Berkeley and Boston University.
This performance marks the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht (Crystal Night or Night of the Broken Glass). On November 9, 1938, gangs of Nazi storm troopers burned more than 400 synagogues in Germany, murdered more than 100 Jews, and deported 30,000 to concentration camps.
The program is sponsored by the Philip and Muriel Berman Center for Jewish Studies, the Department of History and Office of the Chaplain.
For more information, call the Berman Center at (610) 758-3352.
--Tricia Long