Janka

Playwright Oscar Speace and his brother –- the sons of an American GI and his Romanian wife, Janka – enjoyed a normal life growing up in New Jersey in the 50’s and 60’s, unaware that their mother kept her own devastating family history in the dark. Not until after her death did they learn the existence of a 60-page handwritten letter Janka had sent to her uncle about the atrocities she and her Romanian Jewish family endured at the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War. All the more astonishing, Janka wrote the letter mere months after her own liberation from the camps, but chose never to speak of it again in her lifetime.