One can imagine the “historian's delight” experienced by Lisa Peschel, this volume's editor, at the discovery of new and valuable resources for her decade-long encounter with the people and texts of the Theresienstadt ghetto. To be sure, Peschel is only one researcher of many who have investigated and analyzed this unique example of Nazi duplicity and Jewish creativity, but with this exceedingly handsome book, the expansion and revision of her earlier volume of theatrical texts, Divadelní texty z terezínského ghetta/Theatertexte aus dem Ghetto Theresienstadt, 1941–45 (Akropolis, 2008), she has added immeasurably to the store of materials available to the many academic researchers and theater practitioners who are fascinated by the human attempt to resist annihilation through art.

Peschel has divided the book into three parts: her introduction to the history of the period and the ghetto camp from its establishment to its destruction, and two sections of selected texts in the two languages in which they were written and performed, Czech and German. In a number of cases, she serves as translator as well, and her extensive footnoting provides a wealth of linguistic, geographical, cultural, and political information that dispels the confusion occasioned by these “foreign” texts. In addition, the volume contains more than seventy illustrations directly related to the texts: posters of performances and photographs of the performers, copies of musical scores, sketches of places, including performing spaces, where the scripts were read or staged, etc. These illustrations provide a splendid expansion of our knowledge of the ghetto's life, as well as the activities (pictorial, theatrical, musical, etc.) that provided, as the book's title attests, both the response to captivity and the performative opportunities for imaginary escape.

In the rich introduction to these texts, the editor raises the important questions associated with these materials: How should they be categorized? What was their significance and effect? Why are they worthy of study? Central to her search for answers is her conviction that the texts should be seen as more than simple examples of “opposition to powerlessness” (7); they were, in fact, complicated examples of creative endeavor with many goals, not the least of which was to provide both communal distraction from intolerable conditions and images of a prewar existence full of order and ethics. It is likely that Peschel expends much effort detailing the artists’ biographies in order to restore to history their names as well as their works. Similarly, Peschel is scrupulous and generous in crediting the institutions and contributors (many of them survivors or relatives of survivors) who assisted her in the research and publication of this volume.

The texts themselves, with their complex missions, raise two aesthetic questions the editor is aware of: First, are the texts engaging apart from their connection to the genocidal conditions that gave them rise? And if they are, are they worthy of performance today? From the evidence provided here, the results are not encouraging. Many of the authors possess a genuine skill at satirical comedy and “music hall” skits and songs, but translating their plays’ language for a contemporary understanding is a labor of diminishing returns. Laugh With Us: The Second Czech Cabaret and Walter Freud's Purimspiel contain a multitude of jokes and puns in multiple languages that would likely leave contemporary audiences completely in the dark. The puppet play for children attributed to Arthur Englander, The Treasure, contains much fantasy and charm, but presents an additional problem of “unacceptable” stereotypes for contemporary audiences (271). (Peschel indicates that another puppet play, the darkly humorous Looking for a Specter, was adapted for a South African performance in 2007.) The two examples of serious drama included in the volume, Zdeněk Eliáš and Jiří Stein's unproduced Czech-language The Smoke of Home and Georg Kafka's German-language The Death of Orpheus, are turgid, static, and verbose, only interesting for their historical importance.

Performing Captivity, Performing Escape is an important contribution to our understanding of both Holocaust history and the theater's ability to speak (or sing, or dance) truth to power even if that speech is oblique or disguised. By knowing the plays’ histories, we realize that they also speak love and laughter to hatred and fear. Although these texts vary greatly in style and artistry, taken as a group they assert an artistic alternative to oppression and death. Many of the biographies of the artists provided here end with two simple but terrifying words: “he [or she] perished.” What remains to us is a unique record of human aspiration and courage, performed from captivity, yearning for escape.