STAGE BEAT : Children’s ‘Memory’ of the Holocaust

During World War II, more than 15,000 Jewish children were herded by the Nazis into Terezin, an old garrison village outside Prague, where the children lived before their transportation to the death camps. When the town was liberated, only some 300 were found alive.

“Flowers of Memory,” by Bro Herrod at the Burbage Theatre, is the story of Terezin seen through the eyes of the children before most of them knew what was going to happen to them. While the text is moving on any emotional level, the play itself is rather rudimentary. What gives the evening depth is the design of the production and Burbage artistic director Ivan Spiegel’s delicate direction.

Guided by a spirited adult teacher who’s into total denial (Louie Piday), the young prisoners (from tykes to teen-agers) gallantly struggle to act like normal school children. One teen couple (Lorraine Morgan and David Tik-Tin) even gets married in a touching ceremony conducted by an incarcerated rabbi (Al Bernie). But sulking off to the side in a pretty peasant dress is an angry teen girl (seething Valerie Levitt) who’s wise beyond her station.

Most dramatically, the simplistic action of kids writing poems and making drawings is shatteringly rendered through projected blowups of those drawings on the sides of the stage. (The drawings were recovered at the liberation of Terezin in 1945 and are now exhibited at the Jewish Museum in Prague.)

* “Flowers of Memory,” Burbage Theatre, 2330 Sawtelle Blvd., West L.A. Thursday s , 8 p.m. ; Fridays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Ends Dec. 19. $15. (310) 478-0897. Running time: 2 hours.