Born Hebert Rosenthal in 1906, about 30 miles south of Berlin, Herbert Rona was the only son of a wealthy German-Jewish family, owners of multiple hat manufacturing plants in several European countries. Following his graduation from the University of Munich with a Doctor of Science degree, Herbert went into business with his father. Nazism overtook Germany while Herbert was still a young man, and, failing to convince his parents to leave with him, Herbert moved to the Netherlands to run the family’s Amsterdam plant. When life became too precarious there, Herbert made his way to Palestine, where he spent the war years. He emigrated to the United States in 1946.

I have not yet read his autobiographical account detailing his conversion to Mormonism, but it is on my to-read list: The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, referring to convert memoirs, suggests that “for honesty and literary quality probably none surpasses Herbert Rona’s Peace to a Jew.”

Herbert’s only sibling, Charlotte, survived the war and also emigrated to the United States. His parents died in Germany. An account written by a grandson asserts that “Herbert’s recollection was that his parents were separated and transported in train box cars headed for the Auschwitz concentration camp. The box cars were so tightly packed with Jews that his mother was trampled to death. His father survived the treacherous route to Auschwitz where he faced horrors beyond his imagination. The Nazis experimented n him along with many others, and then forced their tortured bodies into gas chambers.” This account by a grandson is far more detailed than that by a daughter, who says only that her grandparents “moved all of their belongings to Amsterdam [but] were stopped at the rail station by the Nazis and both eventually died in Auschwitz.” Perhaps Herbert encountered one or more people who knew the details of his parents’ deaths – a once-wealthy industrialist would be more likely to be recognized and remembered by his fellow prisoners, perhaps, and his son sought out later in Israel or the United States, than, say, an obscure shopkeeper from a rural area – or perhaps the family memory has grown over the years in the same way that some old Mormon families have traditions of their ancestors pulling handcarts from Nauvoo in 1847 … What matters for purposes of this post is that Herbert was very conscious of the suffering of European Jews during the Holocaust, and talked about it with his children and grandchildren so that they, too, understood what he knew.

I do not know when Herbert learned to speak and write English, but there is no trace of an “accent” in his writing by the early 1950s. Presumably his spoken English was similarly good, because in Utah, he quickly established a reputation for public speaking. He addressed ward sacrament meetings and firesides up and down the Wasatch Front. He was called as the instructor for his Seventies’ Quorum (remember, back in the day seventies were organized on a stake basis; the general Quorum of the Seventy had not yet been organized on a church-wide level beyond the calling of its seven presidents). In 1952, Herbert noted with happiness that he had brought up his quorum’s attendance rate to 60%, “with regular, lively discussion since I introduced the ‘modern application’ theme to all Church history studies.” He also introduced a quorum feature of “my monthly problem” where quorum members presented questions or doubts for discussion in the quorum as a council – much, I think, as the upcoming council format of priesthood and Relief Society meetings is intended to function.

Financially, however, Herbert struggled. He had a difficult time finding suitable employment, despite the help of friends to introduce him to industrialists who might be able to use Herbert’s earlier experience, and to administrators at BYU who might have a use for his speaking and writing talents. Herbert dreamed not of running factories, but of writing books and Hollywood screenplays. He advertised his scientific/technical education on his personal letterhead, “Herbert Rona, D.Sc.,” but temperamentally he gravitated to the arts. Eventually (1966), he earned another doctorate, taking his Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Utah. He wrote and published his autobiography; he wrote and tried to publish other works.

And in 1951, he began writing radio plays to be assembled into a book he titled “Call of the Prophets,” drawing on stories from the Book of Mormon. There were to be 13 such plays:

The Call (Nephi)
A Builder of Ships and Men (Jared)
Shepherd and King (Ammon and Lamoni)
On the Stakes (Alma)
Death of a Prophet (Samuel)
The Last Battle (Coriantumr)
Invincible Soul (Abinadi)
The Fugitive (Moroni)
Devil’s Church (the Zoramites)
General and President (Pahoran)
The Thousand and Five (Lamanites)
Secret Combinations (Gadianton)
Mosiah’s Sons.

The play he chose to shop around to potential sponsors and to editors was “On the Stakes.” You know the story: Alma and Amulek preach as missionaries in the land of Ammonihah, where they are cast into prison after a sermon/debate with the lawyer Zeezrom. The two missionaries are delivered by the power of God, but all of their converts – men, women, and children – are burned to death. Fulfilling a prophesy of those missionaries, the city of Ammonihah and its wicked inhabitants are destroyed by earthquake and fire

Candidly, it isn’t a very good play, overall. Dialogue is clumsy and obvious –

AMULEK: Alma, do you think they’ll do what they threatened to do and burn all those innocent men, women and children on the stakes?

ALMA: I prayed they would not – but I’m afraid they will.

AMULEK: These ropes with which they bound us that we must witness the terrible spectacle, these ropes cut painfully into my flesh. Yet their wickedness cuts deeper into my heart. Why doesn’t an angel of the Lord interfere?

ALMA: Man has his free agency to decide whither he goeth, to the light or into the abyss.

– and there are logical flaws, as when the city is destroyed by earth and fire and the walls tumble down and stage directions call for shouting and thunder and the noise of falling houses … and then, immediately afterward, Alma calls Amulek’s attention to the sound of a shepherd’s flute borne on the wind; the shepherd seems not to have noticed the cataclysmic destruction so nearby that the fragile sound of his flute carries to listeners on the crumbled city walls.

And yet …

I sense in the brief play a praiseworthy element growing out of Herbert Rona’s personal compassion for the suffering of innocents, and his interest in making Church history and scripture personal to his hearers:

The list of his intended radio plays bears the notation: “Each play has in the Narration a parallel application of our days.” And the intended application of this play is certain:

Just a few years ago [six] million Jews were killed and burned on the stakes. And who remembers them – but a lone member here and there of one of these exterminated families. Mankind goes on making the same mistakes again, now ready soon for new disaster. Yet the outcome was always the same, throughout centuries. A civilization acting against the law of charity ceases to be. The end is doom, disaster and death. Prophets, the unceasing pioneers of the human race, raise their voice by time. Will we, the heirs of thousands of years experience listen to them?

Is this scene really set in Ammonihah? or in Auschwitz?

AMULEK: Here they’re coming. The mob and their victims, young and old men, teenagers, mothers, children and even babies.

ALMA: The march of shame and of glory throughout the centuries of civilization.

AMULEK: Yesterday they burned their holy scrolls and now they want to throw these people into the flame – their own brothers and sisters. No, it cannot be.

ALMA: They did it yesterday. They do it today. They’ll do it tomorrow. The fury of Satan rules on Earth. There is no light except in God. If men will not conform to His laws – the end is destruction.

AMULEK: There – a little girl separates and runs toward us. It’s Silah, my niece.

SILAH: Uncle, uncle Amulek.

AMULEK: My child – my dear little Silah – where are your parents?

SILAH: They killed them.

AMULEK: O Silah, you’re alone. Who takes care of you? What are you gong to do?

SILAH: I’ll be burned on the stake.

AMULEK: No – They can’t do it – Father in heaven, help –

SILAH: But I will see my Daddy and my Mama again. They are now in heaven and waiting for me.

AMULEK: My precious child, may God strengthen your heart.

And in this scene, where Zeezrom interrogates the fictional character Mindi, is Herbert imagining Alma’s converts, or is he seeing in his mind’s eye the European Jews among whom he grew up?

MINDI: I am a servant of Amulek and his house.

ZEEZROM: Where is his family now?

MINDI: They’re hiding lest they be killed.

ZEEZROM: Are they hiding in a big, beautiful castle?

MINDI: No, They’re hiding somewhere in the country. But – please don’t whip me – I know not the place.

ZEEZROM: I guess they’re hiding in a mud-hut or in a cave.

MINDI: Yes, probably.

ZEEZROM: Did they save much of their silver and valuables?

MINDI: Everything was confiscated. They just escaped with their naked life.

And finally, when Ammonihah was brought as low as Berlin by the end of that war, the survivors try to make sense of what they have seen:

AMULEK: Why now? Why not before?

ALMA: Before they only talked sin. Now their guilt is established, and they were destroyed as every Nation will be destroyed which robs the poor and sheds innocent blood. The law of God is eternal. – Let us leave this place.

AMULEK: O, Alma, my heart is broken. I never can forget this terrible scene.

ALMA: You should not forget. Go to the children of men and cry repentance.

The play could not be professionally produced, and Herbert could not find an established publisher to issue his work. A booklet containing six of the intended plays was printed, however, by the Visual Arts Co. of Salt Lake City – a press-for-hire, probably financed by friends of Herbert’s. The plays were presented there not as professional scripts, but as intended for Family Home Evening presentations or other informal Church settings. As reviewed in the Improvement Era in 1952,

The wealth of Church literature that stems from the Book of Mormon story has been used again in this fictionalized historical drama based upon six scenes from that book of ancient American scripture. They make interesting arm-chair readings, these dramatic episodes, ranging from Jared’s brother, a builder of ships, to Samuel the Lamanite prophet, and these scenes gain in effective power when used as the author suggests – for home evening programs and for other small groups of Church gatherings. – A.L.Z., Jr. [Albert L. Zobell, Jr.]

Herbert died early in 1977, and – interesting only to me, I know – he is buried in the same South Salt Lake Valley cemetery where I will one day lie. And, yes, Daniel Rona, the notable tour guide (“An American, an Israeli, a Mormon and a Jew,” per his advertisements) is Herbert’s son.