Otto & The White Dove

By Ezra Mann, Jeanne C. DeFazio, Julia C. Davis and 2 more

Otto & the White Dove chronicles the life of Otto Kruger an engineering professor at the University in Leipzing, Germany. A Holocaust survivor, he's tormented by flashbacks of the brutal deaths of his wife, children and parents at the hands of the Nazis. When WWII ends, Otto's released from concentration camp and stays in Germany opening a machine shop. Eventually he travels to the United States to pursue the American dream, but instead ends up with a sad and lonely life as the owner of a thrift shop in New York City. By God's miracle grace, a white dove appears at the front door of the shop. The bird explains to Otto the true purpose of his life and experiences a spiritual encounter with the living God. Otto becomes transformed and with a new lease on life; shares his personal knowledge of God's love to others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Nov 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798385205912

Ezra Mann

Ezra Mann, German-born American producer, writer, and director, is most probably best known for coproducing In the Region of Ice. This motion picture won an Academy Award (Oscar) for the best short live-action drama of 1977. Ezra is a former member of The Writers Guild of America West (WGA West) and Director’s Guild of America (DGA) and a current member of Dramatist Guild of America in New York City.

Book preview

Otto & The White Dove

Ezra Mann

Edited by Jeanne C. DeFazio

Foreword by Julia C. Davis and Terry McDermott

Afterword by David Groff

Otto & The White Dove was written as a testimony to the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Fortunately my own parents survived.

Ezra Mann

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Acknowledgments

By the Same Authors

Prologue

Otto & The White Dove

Epilogue

Afterword

About the Authors

Bibliography

Foreword

Julia C. Davis

My brother in Christ, Ezra Mann, and I agree that God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth (Acts 17:26). Both of us swear allegiance to the Constitutional precept that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.¹

Ezra’s brilliant play Otto & The White Dove applies scriptural and constitutional principles to empower Christians of every race in this critical moment in our nation’s history and church history. As an African American woman in leadership positions in many churches, I have integrated multicultural communities my entire life. Ezra and I are both concerned about the rise in discrimination and racial violence in American society. We have both experienced a lot of structural racism² and are speaking up³ for respect and inclusion in the contemporary church and in our nation to breach the racial divide.

Terry McDermott

I am contributing to this project to stand with my brother in Christ, Ezra, for respect and inclusion and against anti-Semitism. I agree with former California Governor Jerry Brown:

We have to restore power to the family, to the neighborhood, and the community with a non-market principle, a principle of equality, of charity, of let’s-take-care-of-one-another. That’s the creative challenge.⁴

I wrote the enclosed poem in remembrance of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. I chose the title, The Shoes of Auschwitz, because Auschwitz is a symbol of terror and genocide, which is anti-Semitism at its worst. The closing of this poem offers a personal relationship with Jesus as the spiritual solution to every human atrocity because Jesus is the Jew, and the Son of God, Who redeems humankind and restores our rightful relationship to God the Father.

The Shoes of Auschwitz

Stopped dead in my tracks,

When confronted with the facts.

Thousands of shoes piled high,

Tombstones for those who did not have to die.

The voice of suffering,

No buffering.

Eighty years later bodies still piled high,

The American holocaust as our children die.

Can you smell that smell,

Satan dancing in the fires of hell.

Before another child falls,

Tear down the walls.

I wonder what they would say,

Morality up and walked away.

Look what is in store,

Blood on the floor.

Let the trumpets sound,

As the walls fall to the ground.

A child will never see a new dawn,

All her tomorrows are gone.

From the North African city of Carthage,

Children burned, envision the carnage.

To Germany, shoes with no laces,

Now, American children with no faces.

Decimation for all to see,

Never, ever let it be.

Only hope to end the strife,

Turn to the Bread of Life.

The epitome of love,

Rending the heavens from above.

The One many people never knew.

Jesus is a Jew.

1

. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, para.

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2

. Structural Racism in the U.S. is the normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics—historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal—that routinely advantage whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color. Lawrence and Keleher, Structural Racism,

1

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3

. Per Senator Jay Rockefeller, I’ve seen a lot of that [racism] and I know a lot of that to be true. It’s not something you’re meant to talk about in public, but it’s something I’m talking about in public because that is very true. See Everett, Senators Duel over ‘Race Card’, para.

7

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4

. Brown, Jerry Brown Speaks Out, para.

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Acknowledgments

I wish to convey my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to, first and foremost, my Lord and Savior