Their attitude is understandable, all the more so in relation to the inevitable distortions and forms of commercial exploitation in the name of art. But even the most careful documentary, in its selectivity and tone, is a symbolic re-creation. For human beings take in the world only by making it new, by bringing to each perception their entire life experience. Even playwrights with no personal connection to the Holocaust take in its survivor emanations and work from a deep tension between historical authenticity and imaginative boldness. What matters enormously is the quality of the work.
Bad art is probably always immoral, but never more so than in connection with the Holocaust.
To be sure, agreement about artistic quality in our time is elusive to the point of nonexistence. But playwrights, like others who write about the Holocaust, require a moral sense inseparable from their talent as they hold on to that tension between suffocating history and the energies of art. We can say now that increasing numbers of playwrights and writers are struggling to do just that. Over the course of a half-century, some have been able to allow themselves more leeway in imagining the Holocaust, while retaining a passionate commitment to it. They have perhaps shown more courage in the necessary artistic manipulation of symbols.