How can objectivity apply?

OLGA LIVSHIN

The Holocaust is a fact. However, not everyone accepts these facts of history, as efforts to deny that the Holocaust occurred continue to this day. Some of the deniers are overt antisemites. Others are decent people who simply don’t know the history or don’t understand what they’ve been taught. For Jews, the play Our Class, by Polish playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek, might shed some light on one essential question about the latter group: Why don’t they get it?

The story has its roots in tragic reality. In 1941, in the small Polish town of Jedwabne, more than 1,500 Jews were burned alive in a locked barn. The atrocity was attributed to the Nazis until 2001, when, after extensive research, Polish-American historian Jan T. Gross published his book Neighbours. In his book, Gross stated that the massacre was perpetrated not by the Germans but by the Polish population of the town, the Jewish victims’ own neighbors. The book’s publication caused quite a stir in Poland.

Slobodzianek based his play on Neighbours, but unlike Gross’ historical tractate, the play is fiction. It spans 80 years and follows 10 classmates, five Poles and five Jews, from an innocent kindergarten lesson in 1925 all the way through the war and then to the years after Neighbours was published.

The world première of the play, translated into English by Ryan Craig, was in London in 2010. Like the book, the play generated controversial responses. Some journalists considered it a fitting contribution to the Holocaust theme. Others expressed a decidedly more mixed reaction.

Vancouver United Players’ artistic director Andree Karas visited London in 2010 but just missed the play. “I wanted to see it,” she said in her introduction to the show, “so I brought it to Vancouver.”

Karas and her company frequently stage thought-provoking repertoire. “Our goal is not only to entertain,” she explained. “Our plays are often challenging, sometimes painful. They discuss relevant issues…. It’s important that they touch deep inside people’s hearts.” Indeed, Our Class reaches deep. But it’s not a Holocaust play. And it’s not a Jewish play. The story is told from the viewpoint of non-Jewish Poles.

In the play, the cruel events of the 20th century roll over Poland. The Soviet occupation of the country in 1939 takes its toll. Tensions mount between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Polish patriots are thrown in jail, tortured or killed. And, as has often been the case, Jews are to blame. As the chasm between Them and Us grows and antisemitism escalates, the audience witnesses the former classmates becoming bitter enemies – the first act climaxes in the slaying of the Jews in the burning barn.

The scene doesn’t show gore or blood but it is terrifying in its simplicity. The set, created by Olexandra Lykova, is spare. A wooden scaffold and several stationary gates form the convoluted routes the heroes travel from their childhood friendship to their adulthood animosity. Movable benches are transformed during the play into interrogation cells, raping beds or the terrible blazing barn.

Although not every non-Jew in the play participates in the carnage, no one actively fights against the horrific events. Those who can’t stomach participating run away or hide. Some shelter their Jewish classmates in secret. But nobody openly stands up against the mob. “What could I do?” is the refrain of the show.

The second act is even more appalling in its ordinariness. The war is over, but the antagonism between Them and Us continues, and no one seems sorry for what has transpired. No one repents the deeds of the war. However, some surviving Jews make a stab at revenge. But hatred only seems to breed more hatred, a vicious circle of malice, a generation twisted by war. The only way out here is moral compromise.

The show’s director, Victor Vasuta, doesn’t see the play as particularly Jewish. “It is not only about the Holocaust. It happens everywhere all the time,” he told the Independent. “The destruction of Armenians in Turkey. The hostilities between Chinese and Japanese. The genocide in Rwanda. The list is endless, stretching through millennia. Neighbors become enemies. They forget human values, or the values flex to accommodate their little community, their tribe, their religion. The play shows the failure of human conscience.”

In Our Class, Vasuta explores the boundary between good and evil. How to stop the pattern of revenge, he asks his audience? How to escape a mob mentality? How far can we go along the chain of hate? In his interpretation, the play doesn’t supply answers. It poses questions that will spark discussions. And the main question for the audience is the same one with which the characters grapple: What would you do?

An actor in the play, James Gill, said: “We must remember without assigning blame. We must understand the circumstances and make sure it doesn’t happen again.” And the play doesn’t condemn. The playwright, striving for objectivity, insists that everyone suffered. But some in the audience won’t be able to help but wonder. How is it possible to explain burning 1,500 people alive? What amount of prior suffering could ever excuse such brutality? And another question lingers long after the show ends: How can objectivity really apply?

Our Class is on at the Jericho Arts Centre until June 26.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She’s available for contract work. Contact her at [email protected][email protected].

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