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“A powerful, original narrative, pungently translated, that reveals the vulnerability of women during the Holocaust and shows the reader a broad cast of characters — from rescuers with moral convictions to those who sexually abused their charges.” — Eva Fogelman, Ph. D.

“As an artist, what I find most powerful in this memoir is how Vava transformed impossibly hopeless experience into something not only livable but meaningful through theater.” — Rochelle Rubinstein

eBook available on Kindle, Apple iBooks, Nook, Kobo, Google Play


An unusual memoir by a professional actress in Ghetto Theresienstadt. Vlasta Schönová, or Vava as she was known, began her theater career as a teenager before the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia. After her deportation to Terezín, she continued to perform and began to direct and write plays. Theater, she writes, invested her life with meaning and kept her alive, even in the most deadly circumstances.

Based on a notebook the actress kept,
Acting in Terezín is translated from the Czech by Vava's cousin, Helen Epstein. It features seven extraordinary theater posters from the Terezín Memorial’s collection.