On Wednesday, December 24th, the entire senior class of MTA attended the biographical off-Broadway play Wiesenthal, recounting the life of Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor renowned for his work as a “Nazi hunter” who tracked down Nazi war criminals all over the world in order to bring them to trial and justice.

In preparation for the play, Dr. Seth Taylor, Principal of General Studies, presented a background session on Wiesenthal’s life and work.

The riveting one-man play was both written by and stars Tom Dugan, the son of a World War II veteran who liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp. During Wiesenthal’s long career, he brought to justice some 1,100 Nazis and when asked what the rationale was behind his devotion to his life’s work he said, “I believe in God and in life after death, and when I meet in the world to come the millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust, I want to be able to say, “I did not forget you.”

The students were moved by the play’s stirring message about tenacity and heroism, and they then had the opportunity to find out even more interesting information during a Q&A session with Mr. Dugan after the play.

In conjunction with the “Names, Not Numbers” Holocaust oral history project, Tova Rosenberg, the project’s creator and director, was able to secure fully funded tickets for MTA students from the Shoah Foundation, whose members thought the play would “align very well with the students’ project.”