Christal
Cooper
Article
2,221 Words
Someone
Else’s Sky
“I think my passion for
creating this story has so much more to do with the idea of what are we going
to do as a species, as a human race, with regard to each other and this idea of
community. If we accept persecution and
holocaust and any sort of atrocity for anybody we accept it for ourselves.”
Randyl
Appel on his play Someone Else’s Sky
Artist Randyl Appel, 51, is campaigning for
funds to produce an actor’s equity reading in New York City on his musical Someone
Else’s Sky based on his mother’s experience as a Holocaust survivor.
Someone Else’s Sky details the three years
in the life of Ilse Steltzer, the daughter of Christian Emil Steltzer and Jew
Else Steltzer who, who are both executed by the Nazis – Emil at Buchenwald and
Else at Auschwitz.
Christian paternal grandfather Opi (Ernst
Steltzer) hides his two granddaughters six year old Ilse and her baby sister in
a root cellar for two years.
While Opi
and her baby sister venture outside to get some needed medicine, the Gestapo
come and take Ilse to Terezin Concentration Camp, where she remains for 15
months, in which she is subjected to torture, horror, sexual abuse, and
experimental testing.
What makes Someone Else’s Sky so unique, with
its own brand of humor, melody, and horror is Ilse’s incredible imagination and
ability to maintain her own sanity and strong spirit by creating her own
fantasy and alternative world in which she is a Princess, friends with Harriet Tubman,
and, along with Biblical Moses, is able to find the Promised Land, long before
the Russians come to liberate the camp.
Appel knew of his mother’s past all of his life,
she was the mother from Germany who endured terrible things. By age 10, Appel had a better understanding of
his mother and her past.
“My mother
said what really kept her going was the alternative life, this imagination,
basically reassigning what was happening around her and to her that she could
put it in context which of course was impossible to do but she did.”
Ilse’s father Emil Steltzer was a local
celebrity and accomplished athlete in soccer in Germany. Even today there is a museum in Germany that
has a display of Emil Steltzer and other local celebrities from the area.
“Because
he was a Christian and married this
Jewish woman, there was no
precedence with what was to come in the Third Reich. For some reason they felt secure staying
there while all the Jewish families fled.
And there was some speculation that he got involved in some underground
work as well.”
Emil and Else Steltzer had two daughters Ilse
and Mariana. They had Mariana baptized,
hoping to have their family identified as Christian instead of Jewish, which
would protect them from the concentration camps, but that is not what happened.
“He married this Jewish
woman (which) was the same as being Jewish, if not in the Nazi’s strange
rulebook, even worse. So my grandmother
and grandfather were taken away to different concentration camps and eventually
were executed.”
His mother also told Appel about her childhood
before the Third Reich, such as when her Opi took occasional trips to America
and brought her back a present – a book on American History, where she first
read about slavery, Harriet Tubman, and the amazing things she had done: escaping to the north on her own, only to
come back to deliver her people to the proverbial Promised Land, an expression
that was first used in the story of the Biblical Moses. To the young Ilse, it only seemed fitting
that Harriet Tubman was known as the ‘Moses of her day”.
And certainly Ilse needed her own Moses
at the time, especially when, just as the Third Reich was coming into power,
her grandmother took her to Christian relative’s homes and pleaded for them to
hide her.
“They
slammed the door in her face. And so my
mother became compelled of this idea of finding a Promised Land, an idyllic
place, and then as her surrounding area in Frankfurt am Main, Germany became unattainable
she began to wonder how she could find the Promised Land in someone else’s
story because she can’t find it in her own.
And indeed if it is in someone else’s story perhaps it is under someone
else’s sky.”
Appel without being aware of it, was writing pieces
of his mother’s story into the pages of his brain; but instead of writing he
pursued a career in music, which he inherited from his mother. Appel
received his degree in Drama and supported himself as a full-time artist with
his acting, dancing, booming voice, and choreography skills. He obtained roles in regional theaters in
California, Colorado, and New York.
The big change in his career came in his 30s
when he felt compelled to go back to New York City where he worked what he
described as a survival job – the typical 9 to 5 job – as a desk clerk at the
first W Hotel in New York City, becoming their first corporate director of
training.
Now he is the owner of his own company Appel Hospitality
Associates (http://appelhospitality.com) and trains hotel
employees on utilizing musical theater as instructor tools. AHA used this unique
approach of training the hotel staff of the first Virgin Hotel.
Then the Bosnia Genocide hit the news,
and the world, along with Appel, was horrified, and he felt compelled to write Someone
Else’s Sky.
“As a son of Holocaust
survivor I just thought there was a threshold that we as a human race needed to
cross where we are no longer just beating each other up and saying, “My
religion is better, or my culture is better, or my skin color is
superior.” It had less to do with I want
to write than to say, “Hey I have something I want to say about a particular
subject. And that subject has to do with
our human interaction.” And so that became the genesis for this story.”
The first thing Appel did to begin Someone
Else’s Sky was the same thing his mother did when she was at her darkest
moment – used his imagination.
“I imagined Harriet
Tubman was running through a forest to the North escaping slavery. And there was Moses in the desert. There was the place outside time and space
where Harriet and Moses intersect and both stopped to have a little
picnic. What would they say to each
other?”
Appel
in his New York City apartment wrote the first lines of Someone Else’s Sky about
a conversation between the two great historical figures. The conversation between Harriet Tubman and
Moses is no longer in the final script, but it was the first step in completing
what is now Someone Else’s Sky.
For the next 20 years Appel worked on the
script, from different apartments in New York City. He now resides in the Upper West Side of
Manhattan.
“I attempted to find a way to tell my mother’s
story as more than just a story about one child in the Holocaust. I wanted to find a way to sort of
universalize this persecution story. Asher who reads his mother’s journal in
the Someone Else’s Sky says, “Oh I’m
just reading this journal. This has
nothing to do with me. This is someone
else’s history.” I was compelled and it
became a life mission, a calling if you will to write it has a human story, as
our story.”
Appel describes Someone Else’s Sky as 80%
fiction and 20% fact; and the most important fact is that Ilse, his mother, did
create this fantasy world, which most artists would describe as an incredible gift
and talent, but Ilse describes to her son as simply a survival skill.
There are also many factual elements of the
musical that are in the play or at least hinted in the musical which include
rape and sexual abuse.
“My mother’s memory is
that the people running the camp could not sustain any kind of semblance of
sanity (because of) behaving so
hideously and inappropriately to other human beings. She remembers tremendous incidences of highly
in despicable behavior. And all of that was capsulated in the fictional rape of
the Mariana in the second act. “The
guards were kind of enough to give me the baby.” There was a lot of testing going on and my
mother was often tested for her threshold of pain. She had her nails pulled from her
fingers. And there were different
medications and things and shots she remembers being tested on her.”
Of the
many factual elements is the ending, which seems hard to believe and larger
than life.
“The
Nazis running the camp were essentially gone and those who survived were asking,
“Where did everybody go?” So the
survivors did not know if they were coming back and they began to forge for
food and hotwire busses and trucks. My
mother was loaded on the back of an open-air bus with the doll that in real
life did exist, given to her by Opi. Ilse
drops the doll and screams which scares the driver and the driver stops. She jumps off the bust to get this beloved doll. Someone says, “Go! Go!
Go!” And they leave without her
and about two football fields over - and
this is all true – the bus blows up – having gone over a landmine or a boobie-trap. So everybody on the bus except for my mother
perished. And this was all before the
Russians came in to liberate her and the remaining survivors.”
Appel’s goal in writing Someone
Else’s Sky is two fold – to write about human spirit conquering
atrocity and to do it in such a way that has not been done before.
“There
is the Diary of Anne Frank that
deals with the hiding and the diary; there is the complete indescribable
inexcusable human behavior in Schindler’s
List. I needed to find a way to convince
the audiences to sit in this show and kind of convey the horror in a way that
could be processed.”
In the end what Appel wants to accomplish
is what the Oscar winning actor Roberto Benigni accomplished in Life
Is Beautiful.
“Along
comes this magnificent film where the father takes this unspeakable horror,
creating a game and asking the audience to laugh. He is so successful in doing that that we are
laughing and this clown is creating this beautiful experience for his son.
What Mr. Benigni did so magnificently was take
us on this ride, and you think you are safe as an audience, safe looking at
this story, safe in creating this identification, and convinced that this set
up is going to be an acceptable ending.
We are taken in as an audience and everything that we think of as safe,
familiar, and acceptable is turned upside down.
And yet we are not safe, and when the father is killed in Life Is Beautiful the audience is
supposed to say, “How dare you! I loved
this man!”
In away I am looking to
mislead the audience in this sense of saying:
Here is something beautiful through a child’s eyes and her hopes. It’s great!
Isn’t hope wonderful! Isn’t she keeping hope alive! And at the end you get slapped in the face
anyway.”
But that slap in the face only applies to
Someone Else’s Sky, because in
real life Ilse’s story does not end when the bus blows up; it continues when
Ilse is liberated by the Russians, and reunited with Opi and her baby sister
Marianne. The three made passage to America where they settled in Newark, New
Jersey, the two girls reared by their maternal Aunt Alice.
“Alice was not a nice woman. The first thing she said to my mother was “If
you were a good little girl it would have been my sister who had been there and
not you. She was raised by this woman up
to the time she married my father.”
The marriage of Joel, a retired electrical
contractor, and Ilse Steltzer has been a happy one, producing three sons: Lawrence, Randyl, and Glen.
“My older brother is
deaf and my younger brother has a learning disability and for the first 30
years of his life was an epileptic. So
my mother went from hiding in a basement, losing her parents to the Nazis,
being in a concentration camp, coming to America to being adopted by her aunt
and uncle and that did not go well, and then having three children – two of
whom are severely disabled. She’s had
her share of drama.”
Ilse believes that organized religion separates
and excludes people; and so, as a result, she reared her sons without organized
religion, but at the same time, to respect all faiths.
“We
were exposed to a tremendous amount of the Bible – both the Old and New
Testament. There is no sense that
religion is negative. I have a real love
of the story of Jesus Christ and his ministry, and I particularly resonate with
that but not in the sense of organize religion.
My mother just wanted us to sample the world and sample the stories; and
connect with what was real for us as individuals.”
Song: IN A PRINCESS’S DRESS
Ilse:
Since my days are unkind
And I’m truly confined
To a life much too hard endure,
I awake late at night
When the sad’s out of sight
I am once again me.
To be sure!
Every night I explore
Something more than dumb war
Something I can live for that is mine.
Something fresh!
Something free!
Some more radiant me.
Out here with these stars!
Where I shine!
Shining
brighter than bright with my most sparkly grin.
I will focus
my light on new lives to drop in.
Into histories or fables and whatever
enables
A star who must truly express
Her royal descent. Live her life
as it’s meant
All ablaze in a princess’s dress
In a princess’s dress why it’s anyone’s
guess as
To which fairy tale I might find
In a princess’s dress yes it’s me who
confesses
That I am truly a one-of-a-kind
Not a girl who’s asleep waiting for
some dumb kiss
From some hero who helps me arise
No, I’m more of a princess who cleans
up my own mess
To see life through her own royal eyes.
In a princess’s dress I shall have more
successes
With those villains who’d never be mean
To a princess who dresses and clearly
possesses
A star shine befitting a queen
(The music swells and dance
ensues. To establish that our story moves swiftly and unapologetically in
and out of this child’s imagination, some of the dance sequence allows Ilse to
appear as if she were actually defying gravity. It is as though she were flying
among the stars!)
Yes! That’s right what you see!
That’s the
accurate me!
I am not bound
to obvious things.
Not to time or to place
I am choosing my grace
And to what my imagining brings
It brings all due respect with my great
intellect
And I’ll educate those who have none
But I don’t choose to wait for the ones
filled with hate
And it’s them who should be on the run.
Yes, in a princess’s dress watch as
beauty impresses
The willing and those with kind heart
So into whose story shall I twirl with
such glory?
Tell me when can my princess-ing start?
(A bit more dance.)
Not to time or to place
I am choosing my grace.
And I’m turning my life into art
So into whose story shall I twirl with
such glory?
Tell me when can my princess-ing start?
Tell me when can my princess-ing start?
Excerpt from Someone Else's Sky
Copyright granted by Randyl Appel
Photograph
Description And Copyright Information
Photo
1
Someone
Else’s Sky logo
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granted by Randyl Appel
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2
Randyl
Appel
Copyright
granted by Randyl Appel
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3
Ilse
in Someone
Else’s Sky
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granted by Randyl Appel
Photo
4
Emil
Stelzer marker
Public
Domain
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5
Else
Stelzer marker
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Domain
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6
Ernst
Steltzer
Copyright
granted by Randyl Appel
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7
A
female concentration camp prisoner shows her wound after liberation.
Public
Domain
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8
Randyl
Appel as a young child
Copyright
granted by Randyl Appel
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9
Cropped
image from The Railway attributed to painter Edovard Monet.
Public
Domain
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10
Emil
Steltzer featured in both photographs as part of an exhibit in Germany.
Public
Domain
Photo
11
Emil
Steltzer featured in both photographs as part of an exhibit in Germany.
Public
Domain
Photo
12
Massed
crowds at the Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, Germany in 1935 where and when the
Nazi announced the Nuremberg Race Law.
Public
Domain
Photo
13
The
Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 deprived German Jews of their rights of citizenship,
giving them the status of "subjects" in Hitler's Reich. The laws also
made it forbidden for Jews to marry or have sexual relations with Aryans or to
employ young Aryan women as household help. (An Aryan being a person with blond
hair and blue eyes of Germanic heritage.)
The
first two laws comprising the Nuremberg Race Laws were: "The Law for the
Protection of German Blood and German Honor" (regarding Jewish marriage)
and "The Reich Citizenship Law" (designating Jews as subjects).
Those
laws were soon followed by "The Law for the Protection of the Genetic
Health of the German People," which required all persons wanting to marry
to submit to a medical examination, after which a "Certificate of Fitness
to Marry" would be issued if they were found to be disease free. The
certificate was required in order to get a marriage license.
The
Nuremberg Laws had the unexpected result of causing confusion and heated debate
over who was a "full Jew." The Nazis then issued instructional charts
such as the one shown below to help distinguish Jews from Mischlinge (Germans
of mixed race) and Aryans. The white figures represent Aryans; the black
figures represent Jews; and the shaded figures represent Mischlinge.
The
Nazis settled on defining a "full Jew" as a person with three Jewish
grandparents. Those with less were designated as Mischlinge of two degrees:
First Degree - two Jewish grandparents; Second Degree - one Jewish grandparent.
After the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, a dozen
supplemental Nazi decrees were issued that eventually outlawed the Jews
completely, depriving them of their rights as human beings.
Photo
14
Nuremberg
Race Law Chart
Public
Domain
Photo
15
Painting
of Little Girl Reading by John George Brown
Public
Domain
Photo
16
View
of false wall hiding place in Corrie Ten Boom House, Haarlem, North Holland;
Closeable
Hole in Cabinet through which divers crawled into hiding place during alarms.
Public
Domain
Photo
17
View
of false wall hiding place in Corrie Ten Boom House, Haarlem, North Holland;
Hole
in wall to reveal hiding place (right)
Photo
19
Jacket
cover of Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad In The Sky by Faith
Ringgold.
Fair
Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo
20
Randyl
Appel, far right, portraying Barnaby Tucker in HELLO DOLLY.
“I did FOUR productions
of HELLO DOLLY! In my career always playing the role of Barnaby Tucker. I
played that role so frequently that my beloved black lab was named
Barnaby.”
Copyright
granted by Randyl Appel
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21
W
Hotel In New York
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Domain
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22
Appel
Hospitality Associates web logo
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Use Under the United States Copyright Law
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23
Bosnian
mass grave being evacuated by forensic scientist.
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Domain
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24
Another
logo for Someone Else’s Sky
From
left to right: Ernst Steltzer, Harriet
Tubman,
Photo
25
Illustration
from an early children’s book
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Domain
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26
Jacket
cover of Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led
Her People to Freedom by Carol Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Kadir
Nelson
Fair
Use Under the United States Copyright Law
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27
Illustration
of Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery
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Domain
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28
Another
logo for Someone Else’s Sky
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granted by Randyl Appel
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29
Randyl
Appel
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granted by Randyl Appel
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30
Image
of a diary entry from Anne Frank
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Domain
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31
Jewish
girl and concentration camp prisoner holding her doll.
Public
Domain
Photo
32
Pictures taken of the children
used in Kurt
Heissmeyer's tuberculosis experiment at Neuengamme. The children of the
Bullenhuser Damm show incisions where axillary lymph nodes had been surgically
removed after they were deliberately infected with tuberculosis at Neuengamme
concentration camp. In a "cover-up" operation, all were murdered with
their 4 adult Jewish caretakers and 6 Red Army POWs in the basement of the
school on 20 April 1945, as British forces
approached to liberate them.
Photo
33
Image
of a doll given to Zofia Burowska by her parents in the 1930s which she kept
with her while living in the Wolbrum and Krakow ghettos. #N00052
Photo 34
DVD jacket cover of the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank
Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo 35
DVD jacket cover of Schindler’s List
Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo 36
DVD jacket cover of Life Is Beautiful
Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo 37
Film clip from Life Is Beautiful
Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo 38
Film clip from Life Is Beautiful
Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo 39
Picture and article about Ernst Steltzer
Public Domain
Photo 40
Newspaper photograph of Ernst Steltzer and his two
granddaughters older sister Ilse Steltzer and Marianne Steltzer.
Public Domain
Photo 41
Newspaper photo of Ernst Steltzer, Aunt Alice, and 10-year-old
Ilse Steltzer.
Public Domain
Photo 42
Newspaper photo of Ilse Steltzer (far left), Aunt
Alice (second from left), Ernest Steltzer (second from right); and Marianne
Steltzer, (above Ernest Steltzer)
Public Domain
Photo 43
Wedding photograph of Joel and Ilse Steltzer.
Copyright granted by Randyl Appel.
Photo 44
Appel Family Photographs
Copyright granted by Randyl Appel
Photo 45
Ilse and Joel Appel
Copyright granted by Randyl Appel
Photo 46
Joel and Ilse Appel
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Appel Family
Copyright granted by Randyl Appel
Photo 48
Logo for Someone
Else’s Sky
Copyright granted by Randyl Appel
