‘Miracle at St. Ottilien’ to be performed at Temple Judea
Richard Hilliard of Sanibel will present a directed reading of his original play, “Miracle at St. Ottilien,” Monday, April 27, at 7 p.m., at the Temple Judea Social Hall, 14486 A&W Bulb Road in south Fort Myers.
The play is based on Hilliard’s memoir, “Surviving the Americans: the Continued Struggle of the Jews After Liberation,” about the treatment of displaced Jews at the end of the Holocaust in Germany in World War II.
Hilliard’s memoir was adapted into an award-winning documentary, “Displaced: Miracle at St. Ottilien” by filmmaker John Michalczyk.
Right after the end of World War II, more than 400 survivors of Dachau and Buchenwald found a safe haven at St. Ottilien, a former German monastery transformed into a displaced persons camp run by the U.S. military. Two U.S. Army privates stationed nearby, a then 19-year-old Robert Hilliard and 24-year-old Edward Herman, were shocked by the horrible living conditions. The food rations were barely more than those in the concentration camps. So they stole food from their own mess hall and smuggled it into the camp. And then they conducted a letter-writing campaign to the United States that caught President Harry Truman’s attention. As headlined in the New York Times, Sept. 30, 1945, “President Orders Eisenhower to End New Abuse of Jews . . . Likens Our Treatment to that of the Nazis.”
Hilliard’s play premiered at Edison State College during its Holocaust Memorial Week in March.