Committed to Memory

"I felt like I had gotten run over by a truck or something," she says. "Suddenly, it wasn't '6 million Jews.' It was more real."

Deb Gottesman, co-director of the Theatre Lab, says that the class had a lot of buzz around it, but that didn't translate to enrollment forms. A month into the course, Gottesman recruited a former Theatre Lab student to join the fledgling class.

"I think it piqued people's interest but, in truth, there are people who thought they couldn't spend 12 or 13 hours immersing in the Holocaust," Gottesman says.

Classes were intense. One night, each student read a Holocaust-related article aloud. Nadifi read one about Nazi medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. He kept reading the horrific material even though his classmates seemed uncomfortable, shifting in their seats, sighing and shaking their heads in disbelief. Nadifi kept reading to the tense room until Garner said, "I can't listen to any more."

The class will perform monologues and scenes in character, then read poetry about the Holocaust. A panel discussion follows with Neumann, poet Myra Sklarew, Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits and the Rev. Amy Butler of Calvary Baptist. Theater J's artistic director, Ari Roth, will moderate.

"Whenever you tell people the name of the class, inevitably they say something like 'Ooh, heavy,' " Garner says. "And it's like, yeah, well, it's what I do for fun."

The Holocaust Project performs at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Goldman Theater, D.C. Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St. NW. Pay what you can. 202-824-0449.