The Playroom Theater presents Eric Krebs' solo show inspired by letters his father wrote in the '40s while imprisoned on Ellis Island and later, when he served in the U.S. Army.
In 1938 Richard Krebs, a German seaman, jumped ship in Newport News, Virginia and vanished into America. In December 1940, under the pen name Jan Valtin, he published his autobiography, 'Out of the Night,' chronicling his time as a communist revolutionist serving Stalin, and later, as a Gestapo prisoner of the Third Reich, and how he finally escaped. The book became a national sensation but a few years later, he was arrested and imprisoned on Ellis Island as a possible Gestapo agent. After being acquitted, he was drafted and served the United States as a combat infantryman in the jungles in the Pacific War. Using a cache of recently discovered letters, his son, Eric, shares his father's passion, beauty, and despair in the period between 1942 and 1945.
