In Quest of Conscience
by Gitta Sereny. Adapted for the stage by Robert David MacDonald.
by Gitta Sereny. Adapted for the stage by Robert David MacDonald.
In Quest Of Conscience examines the life and moral descent of Franz Stangl, the commandant of extermination camps, through interviews that reveal the chilling consequences of his actions during the Holocaust.
About The Play
About The Play
THE FINBOROUGH THEATRE IS NOW FULLY AIR CONDITIONED
A True Story
SS-Obersturmführer Franz Stangl was the Superintendent of the Nazi’s T-4 Euthanasia Programme overseeing the extermination of mentally and physically disabled people, and subsequently Commandant of both Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps. Tracked down long after the war by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal in Brazil, he was extradited to West Germany and tried for the deaths of approximately 900,000 people. During his imprisonment, he was interviewed by author Gitta Sereny, well known for her studies of Mary Bell and Albert Speer. Based on her subsequent book, In Quest Of Conscience is a startling dramatization of those interviews.
The play explores Stangl the child, the husband, the father and leader, attempting to understand how the young boy who started life wanting to be a fabric weaver in his hometown in Austria became responsible for the most efficient death camp of the Holocaust. In Quest Of Conscience is a devastating journey into the dark heart of evil as the interview process gradually brings Stangl face to face with the consequences of his actions…