Tom Dugan in "Wiesenthal: The Nazi Hunter" at the University of Dubuque -- September 19.
Monday, September 19, 7:30 p.m.
University of Dubuque's Heritage Center, 2255 Bennett Street, Dubuque IA
Delivering what Broadway World deemed “a powerful true story” and a “provocative solo performance,” film, television, and stage actor Tom Dugan brings his self-written one-man drama Wiesenthal: The Nazi Hunter to the University of Dubuque's Heritage Center on September 19, the work a horrific, informational, and even, on occasion, humorous presentation in the 10th annual Live at Heritage Center Performing Arts Series.
A Jewish-Austrian Holocaust survivor, Wiesenthal (1908-2005) studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II, and he miraculously survived the Janowska concentration camp, the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen concentration camp. After the war, Wiesenthal dedicated his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial. In 1947, he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre in Linz, Austria, where he and others gathered information for future war crime trials and aided refugees in their search for lost relatives. He opened the Documentation Centre of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime in Vienna in 1961 and continued to try to locate missing Nazi war criminals. He also played a small role in locating Adolf Eichmann, who was captured in Buenos Aires in 1960, and worked closely with the Austrian justice ministry to prepare a dossier on Franz Stangl, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971.
In Wiesenthal: The Nazi Hunter, its leading figure welcomes one final group of students to his Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna. With warmth, wit, and surprising humor, this charming man known as “the Conscience of the Holocaust” recounts the remarkable story of how, after cheating death at the hands of Hitler’s dreaded SS, he dedicated his life to tracking down and bringing to justice the worst mass murderers in human history. Wiesenthal recounts, in a manner befitting a gripping spy thriller, how he solved his most sensational cases, unmasking such notorious villains as Franz Stangl, Franz Murer, and the infamous “Architect of the Holocaust” Adolf Eichmann. It’s time for this 20th-century hero to finally leave the war behind, but not before warning his young friends that, although progress has been made since the dark days of Nazi Germany, the human savage still lurks just below the wafer-thin veil of civilization.
A previous Quad City Arts Visiting Artist who appeared locally in such similar one-man historical projects as Robert E. Lee: Shades of Gray and served as author and director of Frederick Douglass: In the Shadow of Slavery, playwright and performer Tom Dugan will bring Wiesenthal: The Nazi Hunter to life at the University of Dubuque. For the past 20 years, his solo plays have thrilled audiences from Beverly Hills to off-Broadway and have been the subject of numerous PBS programs throughout North America. His Wiesenthal was honored with nominations for the New York Drama Desk Award, New York Outer Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Ovation Award; it won the Los Angeles Critics Circle Award; and the presentation was featured on PBS’s Theatre Close-Up. A feature film of Wiesenthal, produced by Dan Kaplow, is currently in the works, and Dugan’s other critically acclaimed plays include Tevye in New York!, Tell Him It’s Jackie, The Trial of Robert E. Lee, The Ghosts of Mary Lincoln, and Oscar to Oscar.
Wiesenthal: The Nazi Hunter will be presented in the University of Dubuque Heritage Center's John & Alice Butler Hall on September 19, admission to the 7:30 p.m. show is $22-27, and more information and tickets are available by calling (563)585-7469 and visiting Dbq.edu/heritagecenter.
