Mel Gibson and The Passion of Passion Plays

YOWUSA.COM, 25-February-2004
By Janice Manning

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ opens today in 4,000 theaters across the U.S.  Christians across the nation will fill the theaters to capacity to view Mr. Gibson’s version of the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus.  Yet many people also fear its release because of the anti-Jewish sentiments that passion plays, such as the one that takes place every thirty-three years in Oberammergau, disquietingly near the Dachau concentration camp in the south of Germany, have either fortified or caused in the past.