I wish to thank our own Sonia Pressman Fuentes for bringing this excellent and fascinating article by Henrik Eger to my attention.

When Jewish people got deported to labor and concentration camps during the Third Reich, one of Berlin’s most eccentric transvestites — Lothar Berfelde, known as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf — bought or collected the belongings of Jewish deportees and made them part of her Gründerzeit Museum, which still exists today.

In 2003, Doug Wright, a New York-based, Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright, wrote “I Am My Own Wife,” about the cultural outsider. The play has since been performed in 30 countries and is scheduled to come back to the United States for a run in early 2011. The Forward’s Henrik Eger asked the author about the plight of Jews in Berlin as seen through the eyes of Charlotte, the flawed heroine of his award-winning play, which hit a raw nerve with Jewish and non-Jewish audiences alike.

Read the entire original interview here.