Briefly Smiled the Stars

We all know the story of Romeo and Juliet, the two “star-crossed lovers” who take their lives during a civil war that their parents wage in fury and hatred. They try to create a world where love and hope prevail. Tragically, they are defeated by forces that are too powerful for them to overcome.
Now, take that story and put it a concentration camp in Hitler’s Germany in 1938.
The star-crossed lovers now are Rolf, the commandant’s teenaged son and Julia, a young Jewish girl who was rounded up and sent to this camp for speaking out against Hitler.
Rolf despises this government that makes Jewish people disappear. He cannot understand why the Jews are being targeted. His father wants him to join the SS. He refuses to become part of this madness. He lands a job as a clerk and witnesses firsthand the goal of Hitler’s work camps: “Annihilation through labor.”
Time is running out for Julia as typhus rages through the camp. Rolf and Julia cannot overcome the hatred that surrounds them. Only in death will they be together.
We find some familiar characters here. Mercutio enters the story as Kleine, a friend of Rolf’s, who joins the SS. He will one day curse the very regime he serves. The friar steps in as the priest Rolf seeks out to marry him and Julia. Instead of the streets of Verona, we see the violence erupting in a work camp.
Instead of in a tomb, we find the lovers' final embrace in a typhus ward.
The two lovers tell their stories in diaries they feared would be discovered. Rolf’s mother finds the diaries only after they are gone. She mourns how the world is losing love and hope as Hitler's darkness descends all over Europe.
This retelling of Romeo and Juliet finds a new immediacy as antisemitism is once again violently erupting in our world. The star-crossed lovers still speak to us about love and hope. They also warn us that we must stop hate before it stops us.