By Myra Chanin . . .

The Last Cyclist is a cabaret play created by Jewish Prisoners at Terezin/Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp-ghetto, located 30 miles north of Prague, which existed for three and a half years, between November 24, 1941, and May 9, 1945. It was a collection center for Czech, German, and Austrian Jews who from there were transported to killing centers, concentration camps and forced labor camps in German occupied Poland, Belorussia, and the Baltic States. It was also where Jews with some domestic celebrity in the arts were sent and created a thriving cultural life. Writers, professors, musicians, and actors gave lectures, concerts, and theater performances.

The Last Cyclist is supposed to be an allegory that warns about the dangers of totalitarianism, herd-like behavior and the frightening extremes to which bullying can lead. It never received its scheduled premiere performance. The Council of Jewish Elders at Terezin banned it because they were afraid of SS reprisals. The doomed actors were shipped closer to their deaths the following day. Only one actor survived, Jana Sedova.  Her recollections supply the basis of the script in which bicyclists and even those whose grandparents had been bicyclists were blamed for all of society’s ills and systematically hunted down and murdered. It supposedly lets audiences bear witness to Nazi atrocities, which I think is BS. The films of what soldiers encountered when they arrived at the concentration camps bears witness in full.

Edward Einhorn, who directed the film, said that while the actors were creating and performing, they felt alive. They had become whole rather than dying people. I hope so.

The Last Cyclist starts and ends with a Jewish joke.  An inmate of an insane asylum playing Hitler puts a black plastic comb under his nose and asks his group of fellow inmates questions about the cause of all the problems that exist in their world.  They shout a communal two-word answer. The Jews.  One other inmate in the rear has come to a different conclusion. His answer is that the cyclists are responsible. The Q&A continues as above. The communal answer is always The Jews. The non-conformist’s answer is always The Cyclists.  Finally, Hitler asks him, “Why the Cyclists?” And he replies, “Why the Jews?” 

No answer is forthcoming.  I think there are several. The least complicated, most practical is -Follow the Money. But after I watched a series of scenes where “lunatics” and “starving people,” re-enact a symbolic genocide, I found the play frivolous and overly simple. Instead combine the stupidity of the masses, their greed, and man’s capacity for pure evil.  And always remember, it did and could happen here. When? The enslavement of let’s call them the cyclists wasn’t a picnic for those enslaved. It was equally horrifying and murderous.

The Last Cyclist reminded me of the 1967 Tony-winning play, “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.” Wikipedia says the play was a depiction of class struggle and human suffering that asked whether true revolution comes from changing society or changing oneself. Like The Last Cyclist, is also based on true events. I much preferred Marat/Sade to The Last Cyclist. Why did I find watching Cyclist much more excruciating. Because I myself would have been among those starved, or beaten, worked to death or gassed who ended up as anonymous smoke wafting over a crematorium if Hitler had triumphed.

Also, I went to Terezin when I visited Prague. Like all remnants of the Holocaust, it had been tidied up and deodorized. At the entrance to one of the Lagers, I was greeted by a spotless, wooden, what looked like a playground children’s swing, with brand new nooses dangling from the top bar which was no higher than six feet from the grass below. Nobody who was hanged from it enjoyed a swift break-your-neck-and-die-immediate journey to eternity. No, they hung and swung and gasped for breath for an agonizingly interminable period.

The recreation of The Last Cyclist by Karel Svenk was performed and filmed at La Mama in New York City and was shown on PBS in the tri-state area on Tuesday, August 16 at 9:30 pm with an Encore presentation on Sunday, August 21 at 11pm. Playwright is Naomi Patz. Everyone in the cast was excellent, and Melissa Roth’s hair and make-up work was terrifyingly superb.

Photos: Alexander Jorgensen