The Never-Again Club
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Date
2012
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Publisher
University of New Brunswick
Abstract
Seven decades and nearly as many genocides since the Holocaust, the slogan “never again” has been rendered all but meaningless. In the play ‘The Never-Again Club’, seventeen-year-old Alison, the Canadian granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, sets out to put things right. She plans to go to the Sudan as a humanitarian aid worker, encouraged from beyond the grave by a recently murdered Darfuri woman, but discouraged by her late grandmother. In the context of research that shows that the Holocaust can have psychological effects not just on survivors but on their children and grandchildren, the play examines the importance that the genocide of Jews continues to have in the lives of its survivors' families. As well, ‘The Never-Again Club’ examines Western attitudes toward humanitarian activism more generally, and raises questions about the extent to which relatively affluent people should be expected to disrupt or even endanger their lives to help strangers.