Find your way home

Boot stomping and daily searches. Fighting for a few inches of floor space in a crowded barracks. Renting out a lice comb for a few crumbs of bread. "You don't have to tell me you're Jewish." These words have followed Gisela Nilsson throughout her life. What was her mother afraid of? They lived in Sweden, after all.

Imagine that almost an entire nation wants you to die. Not just a few mean classmates, but millions of people who want you to be dehumanized, humiliated, starved, lose your integrity and sanity, and exterminated in the most brutal way. Just because you are Jewish.

Gisela Nilsson portrays her mother's journey from Budapest to the Bergen Belsen camp and then on to Sweden. But she also lets the audience take part in her own inner journey. A journey to understand her Jewish heritage and confront the pain of following in her mother's footsteps. And to open the door to expose the xenophobia that still threatens today.

Teater Västernorrland's actor Gisela Nilsson has dramatized her mother's testimony from the 1944 deportation to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Finding Home takes us through layers of despair, hopelessness and inhumanity. The darkness of the night is mixed with an intense determination to survive. But the play is just as much about strength, where Gisela's story is edged with both warmth and humor, as well as the courage to dare to tell.