The founder of the Jerusalem Ballet Company, Nadya Timofayeva, visited Atlanta last month to drum up support for an American tour for her company. During a short stay that was coordinated by the Israel Consulate in Atlanta, she visited dance programs in Peachtree City, Atlanta, and at Kennesaw State University.
In meetings with local cultural leaders, she was particularly interested in promoting the Jerusalem’s Ballet production of “Momento, Franceska’s Last Dance At Auschwitz,” a performance set during the Holocaust in the fall of 1943. It first premiered in September 2019 on the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II in Europe.
The story is based on the life of a young, rising ballet star, Franceska Mann, who, before the war, had won a prestigious international dance competition in Europe. Her career was cut short when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 and she was interned in the Warsaw Ghetto. But despite the extraordinary difficulties of daily life in the ghetto, she remained stubbornly optimistic.
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“She never gave up hope,” Timofayeva said, “that the world would do what was right and she could resume her life. To the very end she was hopeful.”
Nadya Timofayeva (right) rehearses with dancers from “Momento.”
The Jerusalem Ballet performance is based on research Timofayeva conducted at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, and among family members of Mann, who had survived the war and told of her heroism.
Mann was among a group of young women who were transported from the ghetto under the false assumption that they were to be ransomed from German prisoners of war being held in Switzerland.
The actual story, according to accounts in the book, “Eyewitness Auschwitz,” by Filip Mueller and confirmed by testimony at the International Military Tribune in Nuremberg, at the end of World War II was that their real destination was the gas chambers at…
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