I DIED IN AUSCHWITZ: A Remarkable Story of Survival is a full-length, one-person Holocaust drama — an expansion and transformation of the acclaimed THE MITZVAH PROJECT. I DIED IN AUSCHWITZ is created by and stars Roger Grunwald. It premiered in 2017 in San Francisco under the direction of Nancy Carlin and had a return engagement Oct.-Nov. 2018 at San Francisco's Potrero Stage.

Schmuel's story: I DIED IN AUSCHWITZ is the story of Schmuel Berkowicz, a Polish Jew from Bialystok. It’s a story of innocence and boyhood crushes — survival and liberation. It follows Schmuel’s life from his tween and teen years into young adulthood as the world around him descends into The Second World War and The Holocaust. We are with him in the Nazi controlled Bialystok ghetto; next to him as he witnesses an atrocity; incarcerated with him at Auschwitz; walking next to him on the Death March; standing along side him on the boat deck after his liberation and with him as he finds his life’s calling in America. Through Schmuel, the audience experiences the corrosive moral dilemmas that were the daily currency of The Shoah — a time when the unimaginable was the norm and survival depended on the right choice at the right time, guile and sheer luck.

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“Unsparing… Should surely exist in perpetuity…flawlessly performed and elegantly directed.” — San Francisco Examiner