Date of Award

2011

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Campus-Only Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Liberal Studies

Advisor

Jennifer Moxley

Second Committee Member

Mazie Hough

Third Committee Member

David Kress

Abstract

The goal of this one act play is to give voice to the voiceless and sometimes nameless victims of the Holocaust. A great deal of Holocaust fiction is written from and expressed from a male perspective. As a Liberal Studies graduate student concentrating in Women's Studies and Creative Writing, I intend to offer both the academic and lay person an opportunity to peer into alternate voices and minds of the Holocaust. With the exception of my creative license to write the character of a talking dog, Bubi, taken from the Novel Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, all of the characters in this play are based on women whom either lived through the Holocaust or were affected by its turmoil in way one or another. The talking dog Bubi gives voice to the millions of pets lost during the Holocaust when their owners were taken without warning and placed on the transports headed to Eastern Europe for the concentration camps. This play is the culmination of three years worth of research into the Holocaust as it affected women and animals. If feminism provides a voice for the voiceless, then I hope that my readers hear the voices of not only the women who perished, but the howls of the millions of voices of the pets who were left to wander the landscape of Eastern Europe hopelessly looking for their masters. I have two requests of the reader: be open to the idea that ghosts can exist, and believe that a dog can talk.

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