Written for radio by Giinter Eich
Translated from the German by Michael Hamburger
Gabriele, a Jewish girl of seventeen, is in hiding from the Nazis with her grandfather in a Berlin flat. Inspired by an old newspaper cutting, the two of them reconstruct the story of a party of Italian schoolgirls lost in the Roman catacombs. They feel that their own real situation is illuminated by the imagined one in the catacombs, which for the listener symbolise the Nazi gas chambers.
Cast in order of speaking:
IN BERLIN:
IN THE CATACOMBS:
IN viterbo:
Produced by Christopher Holme