Anti-Hate Play Was to Be Unveiled Night of US Shooting
Agence France-Pressse
Washington - A gunman attacked the Holocaust museum just hours before the unveiling of a new play about hate crimes, following an imaginary conversation between Anne Frank and a black boy lynched in Mississippi.
Janet Langhart Cohen's play "Anne and Emmett" raises similarities between Anne Frank, played by Krista Buccallato (left), the German Jewish girl who died at age 15 in a Nazi concentration camp, and Emmett Till, played by Elyas Harris (right), the 14-year-old African American from Chicago who was kidnapped, beaten and murdered on a trip to Mississippi in 1955. (Photo: Don West)
"Our whole play is about hate, to eradicate hate, and this is an example of hatred," said the playwright Janet Langhart Cohen, wife of former US defense secretary William Cohen, who had been heading to the museum's theater for final rehearsals ahead of Wednesday night's premiere when the attack happened.
The shooting, which fatally wounded an African-American security guard, was reportedly carried out by 88-year-old James von Brunn, a known white supremacist and anti-government activist.
"Anne and Emmett" tells the story of an imaginary conversation between the little Jewish girl, Anne Frank, who wrote her famous diary about hiding from the Nazi occupiers in Amsterdam, and Emmett Till, a young black boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955, Langhart Cohen told CNN.
Frank died in a Nazi concentration camp after the family was betrayed after hiding for two years in a house in the Dutch city.
"I wanted to bring them together in an imaginary conversation to talk about eradicating things like this," Langhart Cohen said.
"I was hoping to give voice to this tonight," she told CNN of her one-act play. "It's really a sad day. I love this museum. This museum tells a story, a journey of all people."
The play, whose unveiling will be rescheduled, was planned to coincide with Frank's 80th birthday which would have been on Friday.
"It's hard to believe that that beautiful 15-year-old girl that's frozen in our memory would be 80 years old herself had she lived," said Langhart Cohen.
"And I wanted to dedicate it to her. And to think that someone of her generation still harbors that hate."
The gunman walked into the museum on Wednesday and opened fire, wounding guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, who later died in hospital. Two security guards then returned fire, wounding the gunman who was being treated in hospital.
Hardened Holocaust denier von Brunn served the United States during World War II and has written extensively about his long-simmering resentments against Jews and minorities.