If you are in NYC or plan to visit soon, I urge you to witness a major theatrical event—the searing and profoundly memorable play Our Class, now playing at Classic Stage Company 136 East 13th Street through Nov. 3rd.
The pivotal moment of this in-your-face, sometimes shocking, and brutal tour de force is the massacre of pretty much the entire Jewish community of Jedwabne, Poland, in a horrific pogrom that took place on July 10th, 1941.
I am inextricably connected to this hideous event as all my Polish Jewish family on my mother's side, then living in Jedwabne, were rounded up by their Catholic Polish neighbors and locked in a wooden barn, and incinerated there.
This story was suppressed for years in Poland. Still, a few Jewish people who managed to escape the barn memorialized this tragedy in a Yizkor Book (Memory Book) published in Israel, which included the names of all the victims—including my mother's original family name of Piekarski, which chillingly is invoked in this play—and which preserved the memory of this shocking crime over the years among the relatives of the annihilated Jewish community scattered all over the world.
I first heard about Jedwabne in whispers from my mother after she read excerpts from the Anne Frank Diary in Life Magazine in August 1958, when it was published in the US.
When she finished reading excerpts to me and my siblings, I asked her:
"What happened to our relatives in Poland?"
"They were burned to death in a barn along with the entire Jewish community of Jedwabne."
Despite my young age, even I quickly did the math and was shocked to realize that this tragedy had taken place a mere 17 years ago—ONLY YESTERDAY—and I shuddered involuntarily.
It's all here in a tumultuous, nearly 3-hour play which, utilizing many avant-garde theatre techniques (projections, animations, mime, sound manipulation, interpolated fragments of Yiddish songs, and repeated breaking of the fourth wall), brings the sweeping panoply of 20th Century Polish history to life in this tale of a mixed elementary school class of Jewish and Catholic children—a class who despite their religious differences exhibit much innocent love towards each other in the first flush of youth—and how the boys and girls of the class are torn apart when History tramples over them in the form of militant Polish nationalism and the advent of two invading armies (Russian and German), which seeps away and rends the entire cultural, political, and moral landscape of their youth asunder.
Directed by Igor Golyak and written by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, this play caused a firestorm of controversy when it premiered in Warsaw in 2009. This was also the case with the publication eight years earlier of Polish historian Prof. Jan Gross's book Neighbors, about the Jedwabne pogrom, which blew the lid off the 60-year hushing-up of details of this atrocity in Poland.
The NYC production, which ran at BAM Fisher Theater in January of this year, boasts an excellent cast highlighted by Gus Birney (pictured above) and Richard Topol. It is not for the faint of heart. This passion play (!) will leave you shaken (and you don't have to be Jewish).
Coming as it does with alarming rising levels of anti-semitism in the world and the two-headed Dogs of War currently howling on the World-Historical stage, it could not be a more timely play. Attendance is mandatory!
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ADDENDUM (24 October 2024):
Last night, after the performance of this amazing play, Scott Richman, director of the NY/NJ chapter of the ADL, led a panel discussion that included personal statements about Jedwabne from Scott, the Ukrainian director Igor Golyak, and three people who took part in the official apology ceremony in Jedwabne by invitation of the then Polish government. We three all made the journey to Jedwabne in July 2001 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of this hideous pogrom, and we three bonded there. Two of us are direct descendants of victims of the Jedwabne massacre.
Scott and Igor spoke first: Scott made a statement about distressing rising levels of anti-Semitism worldwide, and Igor discussed his own complicated relationship with the material and the current war between Ukraine and Russia (he has lived in both countries).
Next to speak was Rabbi Miller, the South African-born son-in-law of Rabbi Baker of Israel.
The late Rabbi Baker had meticulously collected eyewitness accounts of the Jedwabne massacre along with a list of all the Jews who perished in the barn that day. Rounding up, torturing, and then incinerating all the Jewish men, women, and children in the barn that day was just the beginning--followed by dismemberment with axes and shovels and burial in a mass grave. Rabbi Baker arranged to have his findings published in an official Yizkor Book (Memory Book) in Israel.
News of the publication of this Yizkor Book caused a stir in Poland, eventually leading Polish historian Prof. Jan Gross to thoroughly investigate the Jedwabne crime and publish his own findings in his book Neighbors, which on publication in Poland touched off a firestorm of controversy which is still raging there, including vehement denial by the powerful Catholic Church (several years ago the revisionist Polish government passed a law making it a crime to use the phrase "Polish Holocaust" in any context).
My old friend Ty Rogers was next up and spoke eloquently about his personal discovery and investigatory research into the crime of Jedwabne over many years. I made the final statement and related my own complicated relationship with Jedwabne, which I first learned about from my late mother at age 6.
I cannot stress it enough, Our Class is just phenomenal. There are 13 more performances at the Classic Stage Company CSC theatre on East 13th St, and you should really try to see them before they close in NYC. I brought my old friend Ken Hurwitz, who works for the Open Society Foundation, with me last night, and he was shaking his head in awe and admiration of the play's power at the close,
I've seen this play written by Tadeusz Słobodzianek three times now, and it never fails to draw me in—and to draw tears. It is so fresh and vital. And very, very intense. As mentioned, it's directed by Ukrainian wunderkind Igor Golyak and superbly acted by an ensemble who perform this nearly 3-hour play with ferocious energy and jeu d'esprit. This may well be the best acting currently on view in NYC. Special standout performances are by the luminous Gus Birney and the Class Teacher Richard Topol, but the whole ensemble is fantastic.
I was so honored to take part in the panel afterward last night.
Thank you to producer Sara Stackhouse and the Arlekin Players Theatre.
Above is the song I wrote about Jedwabne at Rabbi Baker's suggestion while we were there in July 2001. Recorded in NYC with Ernie Brooks, Jerry Harrison, Billy Ficca, Jason Candler, Jenni Muldaur, and Alva Rogers, it first appeared on my Gods and Monsters album The Ordeal of Civility, released on Knitting Factory Records. I've sung it at the annual Jewish Heritage Festival in Kazimierz Krakow and at Symphony Space here in NYC on a bill with the late Theodore Bikel and other great Jewish artists.
It's sad to say that this song may well have cost me shows in Poland currently.
But I will continue to perform my song and speak about what happened in Jedwabne to the end of my days.
For more info, please read my "Letter from Jedwabne," published in The Forward: https://forward.com/.../jedwabne-pogrom-poland-gary.../