A Londoner has used his family’s “miracle” escape from Nazi-occupied Denmark to inspire his first play.
Alexander Bodin Saphir’s grandparents Fanny and Raphael Bodin were among more than 7,000 Jews who fled to safety in 1943 in boats across the Øresund strait to Sweden. They made the journey with their 15-month-old daughter Lis, the playwright’s mother, in a fishing boat.
Bodin Saphir, 40, a documentary maker from Bermondsey, spent 15 years writing Rosenbaum’s Rescue, a play which explores how so many Danish Jews, including his grandparents and mother, survived the Second World War.
One theory, explored in the play, is that Dr Karl Rudolf Werner Best, a senior SS officer who ordered their deportation, deliberately sabotaged Hitler’s plan and warned the Jewish community what was about to happen. He said: “I grew up with this miracle rescue. It’s not just my family, it’s Danish national folklore, it’s a massive part of Danish national identity.
“I had to wait for historians to do the research so I could write the play... I am nervous but also really excited.”
He added: “The play tries to understand how and why their desire to save their Jewish community resulted in a more successful evacuation than say Holland, where they also had a big Resistance, but a very different occupation.”
“This is a play exploring truth, identity, and the nature of history, and as people who live in 2019 viewers can decide how it relates to today’s world.”
Olivier Award-winner David Bamber will star in the play, alongside Neil McCaul, Dorothea Myer-Bennett and Julia Swift. The play, directed by Kate Fahy, opens this week at Park Theatre in Finsbury Park.
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