Hitler's President (Slovakia)
By Luba Lesna
Translated by Julia Sherwood
Based on the book Your Honour, Mr President by Madeline Vadkerty
Directed by Alexander Harrington
With: Erin Beirnard (Eugenia/ Lukoviny), Jessica Crandall (Bohumila/ Ružovičová/Irena/ Csajágiová), Robert Ierardi (Hitler/Teacher/ Kovac/Ruzovic), Kyle Minshew (Wetzler), Dave Stishan (Tiso/Vrba),
A new play examining the former Slovak President Tiso and his complicity with Hitler during World War II. Madeline Vadkerty will be in attendance to discuss the history behind the play.
Performed in English.
Presented with the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews.
The play Hitler's President is based on letters written by Jews during the Holocaust to the then President of Slovakia, Jozef Tiso, asking him to grant them an exception and not to deport them to concentration camps. These letters were collected by historian Madeline Vadkerty. The play is still being successfully performed in the Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav Theatre in Bratislava.
Alexander Harrington (director) has directed at New York theaters including Metropolitan Playhouse, La MaMa, The Culture Project, Queens Theatre, and The Actors Studio. Regionally, he has directed in Maryland, New Hampshire, Upstate New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina. He has also directed at Louisiana State, Clemson, and Bentley Universities. As a playwright, he has adapted and directed Chekhov’s The Kiss, Sherwood Anderson’s The Philosopher, and a two-part adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov; translated and directed Aeschylus’ Agamemnon; and written The Great Society about Lyndon Johnson (not to be confused with Robert Schenkkan’s play of the same title and subject).
Ľuba Lesná (born 1954 in Bratislava) is a former investigative journalist, editor, and political commentator for Radio Free Europe, the author of short stories, novels, and plays. As a journalist, she mainly dealt with cases in which the Slovak Information Service was reasonably suspected. She wrote several journalistic books: The Abduction of the President's Son or A Short History of the Secret Service (1998). For this book she received the Czech-Slovak Egon Erwin Kisch Award for Non-Fiction (1999). She wrote and directed the documentary play Vultures Versus the Clarinet (2016) about a young clarinetist from the GDR, Hartmut Tautz, who during the totalitarian times in 1986 tried to escape from Bratislava to Austria and was bitten to death by dogs at the border. The book of interviews, Land of Rough Lines, with Slovak Prime Minister Iveta Radičová, was published in 2013. Being Polite Is Not Enough (2019) was a memoir written by Ľuba Lesná with prominent Slovak dissident and philosopher Miroslav Kusý. In 2017, a book of short stories, The Thousand-Year Woman, was published. The play Steiner Bookstore was based on the true story of the famous Steiner family during the Holocaust. The play was successfully performed in Bratislava. A stage reading of this play took place in New York in the spring of 2023. Ľuba Lesná is the founder and annual organizer of the reading of the names of Holocaust victims in Slovakia.
Madeline Vadkerty, originally from Washington, DC, is a historian residing in Bratislava, Slovakia. She is the author of Your Honor Mr. President: Letters to Jozef Tiso (in Slovak) which is currently in its third printing. On February 27, 2027, Purdue University Press will publish her new book entitled Writing for their Lives: Ordinary People Petition Slovak President Jozef Tiso during the Holocaust. Both publications offer the historical context for the desperate pleas for mercy that Jews penned to Slovak president Jozef Tiso during World War II. Vadkerty received her doctorate at Gratz College in Holocaust and Genocide Studies in 2025 and is the author of numerous articles about Slovakia’s responsibility for the persecution and deportation of Jews. She makes presentations to student and public audiences throughout Slovakia and other countries. She teaches courses at Comenius University, The Bratislava International School of the Liberal Arts, and the Higher School of Musical Education in Bratislava. Her research into letters to Tiso and the tragic fates of their authors inspired the theater play “Hitler’s President,” written by Luba Lesna. A former employee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Vadkerty’s mission is to expose audiences to the events that shaped the Holocaust in Slovakia and bring information out of the archives and into public awareness.
Part of Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival honoring Václav Havel, produced by the Vaclav Havel Center and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association.
ABOUT THE 2026 REHEARSAL FOR TRUTH INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL
Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival, honoring Václav Havel, is a showcase of contemporary European theater organized each year in New York City. Conceived in 2017 as a shared endeavor of the Václav Havel Center (VHC) and Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA), the festival honors the legacy of Czech playwright, dissident and political thinker Vaclav Havel.
Each edition of Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival addresses current sociopolitical trends in Central and Eastern Europe, offering New York audiences a unique opportunity to witness the region’s theatrical zeitgeist.
The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. The festival is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.