OBERAMMERGAU (Dec. 20)
The Passion Play, which is staged in this Bavarian town every 10 years, will be performed 91 times in 1970, using intact the anti-Semitic text of 1850, despite world wide protests, it was learned here today.
The protests in 1966 and early 1967 reached such a pitch that Dr. Alfons Goppel, Minister President of Bavaria, promised to seek to induce the Oberammergau sponsors to use a different text. His efforts failed. Hans Schwaigerhof, who was to have directed the 1970 performances, resigned in protest against the anti-Semitic text. The text portrays the Jews as a fiendish, bloodthirsty people.
Ten leading American intellectuals joined in November, 1966, in a call for a world-wide boycott of the Passion Play. However, the village is busy now sprucing up its 50,000 guest rooms for tourists. Casting is scheduled to begin soon.