Valley Man’s Holocaust Play Presented at Temple Theatre

By Barbara Swarm, The Sentinal

(Hanford, CA) April 10, 2003 – “Janka: One Minute of Happiness,” a new Holocaust play, will be presented as a Side Door production at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at the Temple Theatre, 514 Visalia St.

In a chronicle starring Janice Noga, and written by her husband Oscar Speace, Janka’s story reveals in detail what really happened when her family was torn apart during World War II.

The quest to make this personal account of history come alive didn’t come easy for Speace, Janka’s son, who is a producer and director at Valley Public Television.

Because Janka Festinger Speace seldom spoke of her time spent in Auschwitz, Oscar’s attempt to recapture his mother’s ordeal became a difficult one. Along the way he discovered only bits and pieces of her past.

With all he had uncovered, Speace set out to write a play depicting his mother’s horrific encounters inside Auschwitz’ concentration labor camp.

Speace’s first draft was sent to an aunt in Canada. It came back with this reply, “This is OK, but it is not what happened. I’ll send your mother’s book.”

The book was actually a 60-page handwritten letter by Festinger to her Uncle Morris, who lived in Cleveland during the war.

The Speaces were in awe that a document of this nature survived all these years.

Six weeks later, the little composition notebook arrived in the mail.

“It came and was in Hungarian,” said Oscar Speace, adding, “I can’t read a word!”

For the next nine months, Speace, with the help of Hungarian-speaking Nora DeWitt, spent every Saturday morning deciphering the words and uncovering his mother’s past.

“She would read it first,” explained Speace. “she would cry, then I would have to wait 20 minutes.”

According to Speace, his mother’s written words were very articulate.

“It was like having your mother talk to you beyond the grave,” he said. “She didn’t pull any punches.”

In that little composition book, Janka Festinger Speace told her story.

Now on the intimate stage of the Temple Theatre, her story will be retold by Janice Noga, an accomplished singer and actress.

“What inspired me to do it was the writing of my husband,” said Noga. “He wrote such an honest picture of his mother.”

Noga was given a firsthand account of the horrors of the Holocaust by Janka herself during their earlier meetings together.

“She wanted me to convert to Judaism,” explained Noga, who is Catholic. “My heart saddened when she was telling me the story. That was the last time she talked about it.”

Four years later Speace and Noga were married in a Jewish ceremony. “It was beautiful,” said Noga. “That was the one gift I could give her.”

Festinger, who was liberated on May 11, 1945, died in 1994.

For Speace, this journey into his mother’s past had taken him to a place he never thought he would go.