Members of the cast of "Remnants": Maria Orlowski, Bob Green; Rebecca Winston, along with engineer Steve Graham.

Dr. Greenspan said he was looking
for each monologue to reflect a diff-
erent mood: one is quiet; one is
outraged; one tells his story as a
documentary.
Similarly, each survivor feels he
has a different task, Dr. Greenspan
said. "One is giving memory to an
entire community; another is wav-
ing his fist in the air, shouting, 'We
are here! We are here!' "
The single cohesive factor he
sought was a kind of drumbeat of
memory.
"My purpose in writing
`Remnants' is to tell people about
the Holocaust," he said. "I want it to
stay with them, to haunt them. I
want to grab people by the shoulder
and say, 'Listen to this.' Why? Be-
cause they should. I want survivors
to be heard."
What he did not want was to pre-
sent a message.
"The program negates the idea
that there's some big meaning to all
of this," he said. "The message is:
there is no message. Not .that people
should feel nothing after hearing it.
They should feel more fragile."
Dr. Greenspan considered at
length the question of altering the

survivors' exact words. Author
Aharon Appelfeld and others have
charged that the Holocaust was so
terrible, so unique, that the only
way to speak of the death camps is
through survivors' raw documenta-
tion.
"I know that argument: Is it
drama or is it true?" Dr. Greenspan
said. " 'Remnants' is drama and it's
true. And the fact that it isn't ver-
batim doesn't make it less true."
He calls his play "an interpretive
response," which makes use of his
skills as a clinical psychologist.
"As a therapist, it's my job to
reflect back to others in words that
are different, but which bring them
back to what they said," Dr.
Greenspan stated. "Hopefully, they
will respond, 'That says it better
than I could have.' Then it becomes
their own story."
Some of the monologues compris-
ing "Remnants" were first perform-
ed by the U-M student group which
originally requested the script.
Among those in the audience was
Roma Solent, whose story was the
basis for the piece describing the
woman who lost her voice, only to
find it years later in a DP camp.

"It was only a little of my story,
but I still felt it was my story," Mrs.
Solent, who was born in Poland, said
of the monologue.
"What I was watching for was the
audience reaction. Anything that
would evoke questions or outrage
from them was fine with me," she
said. "And I liked the reaction that I
saw."
Last year, Dr. Greenspan sub-
mitted the final" version of
"Remnants" to the Michigan Radio
Theater Group, which was seeking
scripts for a radio drama.
"We were unanimously interested
in his play," said Ann Klautsch, a
U-M theater department professor
active in the Michigan Radio
Theater Group. "We were all im-
pressed by the sheer elegance of his
words."
The script portrayed an enormous
tragedy in human terms, Ms.
Klaustch said. The suffering of mill-
ions can be incomprehensible. The
pain of one is not.
"Long after I read it, the images
were still in my mind," added Har-
riet Teller, promotion director for
Michigan Radio, which will air the

production later this month. "I could
still hear the voices."
The next step was producing the
work. Last November, the Theater
Group sent out a call requesting
voice tapes. They were looking for
distinct voices to "represent the
uniqueness of the monologues," said
Ms. Klautsch, who, together with
Dr. Greenspan, directed
"Remnants."
They received more than 60 tapes.
The six actors eventually selected
comprised a variety of ages and
backgrounds. They include a U-M
student, a professor at the U-M
Medical School and a survivor of the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The final version of the half-hour
long "Remnants" took 70 takes. The
pauses separating the words were as
important as the dialogue itself.
The total production took-about four
weeks; it was then sent to WUOM,
the Ann Arbor NPR affiliate, which
will air the broadcast 8 p.m. April 30
and 12:30 p.m. May 4.
"Remnants" also will be featured
during the Ann Arbor citywide
observance of Holocaust Memorial
Day, 4 p.m. April 26, when it will
include a candlelighting ceremony. ❑

