A play written by Felix Meyer-Christian from the Hamburg-based theatre company costa compagnie has been translated into English for the international journal The Holocaust in History and Memory published by the University of Essex and edited by Professor Rainer Schulze.

In addition to Meyer-Christian’s play The Earthquake in Chile Or The Prisoners of Stutthof and an interview with the playwright, the journal includes contributions from two other artists based in Hamburg: Michaela Victoria Hoepffner and artist Angela Breidbach.

Thanks to these strong creative connections the journal will receive its international launch in Hamburg on Wednesday 11 June at 8pm at Heinrich Heine Buchhandlung.

The new volume of The Holocaust in History and Memory asks whether art created about the Holocaust can help keep the legacy of the survivors alive.

Film makers, visual artists, actors and musicians continue depicting the Holocaust, but are there risks when art replaces authentic testimony?

The Earthquake in Chile Or The Prisoners of Stutthof reflects on the fate of the prisoners from Stutthof concentration camp who were driven by the SS to the coast when the Russian Red Army was approaching the camp and left to drift on small barges across the Baltic Sea with no food or water. It highlights a nearly forgotten episode from the end of the Second World War aiming to engage audiences with issues surrounding the Holocaust.

Professor Schulze says he was keen to include the play in the latest edition as an example of how contemporary art deals with the memories of the Holocaust.

He said including the play was particularly fitting as Essex Honorary Graduate and Holocaust survivor Dora Love, who died in 2011, was a prisoner of Stutthof concentration camp and was one of the few survivors of this death journey. After settling in Colchester in the UK she used her experiences to educate young people about the Holocaust which led to the University of Essex establishing the Dora Love Prize in her memory.

Professor Schulze said: “Wherever I went with Dora, we always found that the Stutthof evacuation is an episode from the final phase of the Holocaust that very few people know about, and this made it amazing for me to discover that Felix Meyer-Christian not only knew about it, but had incorporated it into a play.”

The UK launch of the journal will be held on Sunday 22 June at the Latest Musicbar in Brighton.

For more information contact the University of Essex Communications Office on ++44 (1206) 874377 or comms@essex.ac.uk.