‘I Suggest a Night at the Theatre, Mr.Cameron’: Memory, History and Responsibility in Our Class (Nasza Klasa, 2009)

Abstract

In November 2010, journalist David Aaronovitch addressed the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, in The Times. ‘This is the kind of advice I Ioathe,’ he wrote, ‘but I'll say it anyway. Go to see Our Class, Mr. C. This is one hole you don't want to keep digging’. In this article I will consider: the political circumstances surrounding the world premiere of Tadeusz Sobodzianek's play at London's National Theatre; the significance of its performance outside the playwright's own country; and the ways in which both the translated text and the performance engage formally and aesthetically with key themes within Holocaust representation, namely, memory, history and responsibility. I will also explore how Mr. Cameron – as Aaronovitch expressed it – ‘came to be in the position of demanding that a foreign secretary, descended from Polish Jews, should apologise far possibly offending the sensibilities of a foreign politician who vehemently opposed there being an apology for the massacre of Polish Jews’.

Notes

See David Aaronovitch's article ‘I Suggest a Night at the Theatre, Mr. Cameron’, The Times, 3 November 2009. This is available at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article6900013.e - [accessed 12 January 2011].

Tadeusz Słobodzianek, Our Class, performed in a version by Ryan Craig, from an annotated translation by Catherine Grosvenor, first publication in English (London: Oberon Modern Plays, 2009). First performance National Theatre (Cottesloe) London, 23 September 2009. Last performance, 12 January 2010. Running time – three hours with interval. Directed by Bijan Sheibani. Designed by Bunny Christie. Lighting design by Jon Clark. Music by Sophie Solomon. Choreography by Aline David. Sound by Ian Dickinson. Cast: Władek – Michael Gould; Zocha – Tamzin Griffin; Rachelka/Marianna – Amanda Hale; Menachem – Paul Hickey; Jakub – Edward Hogg; Zygmunt – Lee Ingleby; Dora – Sinead Matthews; Rysiek – Rhys Rusbatch; Abram– Justin Salinger; Heniek – Jason Watkins.

For further details on Kantor, see Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius and Natalia Zarzecker, Kantor Was Here: Tadeusz Kantor in Great Britain (London: Black Dog, 2011); Noel Witts, Tadeusz Kantor (London: Routledge, 2010); Krzysztof Pleśniarowicz, The Dead Memory Machine (Aberystwyth: Black Mountain Press, 1990).

Further research on Grotowski (1933–99) is available via a number of English-language based sources. A fairly comprehensive listing of these can be obtained at http://owendaly.com/jeff/grotdir.htm

See Monika Kosz-Koszewska, ‘Słobodzianek głos o Jedwabnem w Anglii’ (Slobodzianek is the voice of Jedwabne in England), Gazeta Białystok, 30 September 2009. http://bialystok.gazeta.pl/bialystok/1,35233,7094314,Slobodzianka_glos_o_Jedwabnem_w_Anglii.html [accessed 27 March 2011].

Jan T. Gross, Sąsiedzi: Historia Zagłady żydowskiego miasteczka (Sejny: Fundacja Pogranicze, 2000).

See Norman G. Finkelstein, Goldhagen for Beginners: A Comment on Jan T. Gross's Neighbors, http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=7 [accessed 20 January 2011].

Daniel Blatman's article ‘Were these ordinary Poles?’ is available online from the Yad Vashem Shoah Resource Center (www.yadvashem.org). See http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%204795.pdf [accessed 15 May 2011].

Leonard Neuger, ‘Afterward’, in Tadeusz Słobodzianek, Nasza Klasa (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo słowo/obraz terytoria, 2009), p. 105. Translated by Teresa Murjas.

See Andrzej Małachowski, Phenomenon of Nasza Klasa (Our Class), http://iisit.org/Vol6/IISITv6p365-372Malachowski614.pdf [accessed 17 May 2011].

See Aaronovitch, ‘I Suggest a Night'.

Toby Helm and Rajeev Syal, ‘Rabbi urges Tories: cut links to Polish MEP’, Observer, 19 July 2009. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/19/rabbi-tories-polish-mep - [accessed 26 August 2010].

See ‘Ex-Tory MEP Edward McMillan Scott joins Lib Dems’, BBC News Channel.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8564914.stm [accessed 16 January 2011].

See ‘Profile: Kaminski MEP’, BBC News Channel. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8154670.stm [accessed 16 January 2011].

For a fairly comprehensive list of links to sources relating to this event, see The Jedwabne Tragedy, http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/classroom/J/ [accessed 11 January 20111].

For a transcript of the speech, see Platform for Jewish–Polish dialogue, http://www.dialog.org/hist/kwasniewski.html [accessed 20 January 2011].

For contextual information relating to this matter, see http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/classroom/J/Mach.html [accessed 22 January 2011].

To see an image, access Wujo Jaro, Poland Jedwabne, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jarek_wujkowski/3274835650/ [accessed 21 January 2011].

Paweł Machcewicz of Poland's Institute of National Memory has suggested that it is particularly important to view the Jedwabne massacre in the context of a pogrom that took place three days earlier, in Radziłów. See http://www.radzilow. com/tygodnik.htm [accessed 22 January 2011].

See page 1 of http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%204795.pdf [accessed 21 January 2011]. ‘They torched the local synagogue, placed the Jewish population under curfew, and seized anything they needed, as they did in hundreds of Polish towns that came under their heel’.

For introductory information regarding similar events in the neighbouring town of Radziłów, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/jarek_wujkowski/3274835650/ [accessed 21 January 2011]. For introductory information regarding pogroms in the Łomża district, where Jedwabne and Radziłów are situated, see http://www.radzilow.com/tygodnik.htm.

See Dariusz Stola, ‘Jedwabne: Revisiting the Evidence and Nature of the Crime’ in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 17 (Spring 2003), 139–52.

See Institute of National Rememberance, http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/ [accessed 20 July 2011].

See http://www.jewishpost.com/archives/news/families-of-murdered-jews-protest-recent-decisions-on-jedwabne.html and http://www.wbj.pl/article-7690-jedwabne-exhumation-declared-closed-after-150-to-250-bodies-discovered.html [accessed 20 March 2011].

Wokół Jedwabnego, ed. by Paweł Machcewicz and Krzysztof Persak (Warszawa: IPN, 2002).

http://wyborcza.pl/1,75517,1204671.html [accessed 26 March 2011] Translated by Teresa Murjas.

Ibid.

See Michael Meng, ‘Did Poles Collaborate or Resist the Nazis? Problems with Narrating the Holocaust in Poland,’ in Memory, History, and Responsibility: Reassessments of the Holocaust, Implications for the Future, ed. by J. Petropoulos, L. Rapaport, and J. K. Roth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2010), pp. 233–50.

See, for example, Norman Davies, The Past in Poland's Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

Andrzej Munk and Witold Lesiewicz (dirs) Passenger (Pasażerka), 1963. Based on the novel by Zofia Posmysz, an Auschwitz survivor. See Zofia Posmysz, Die Passagieren (Norderstedt: Herstellung & Verlag, 1969). Posmysz also wrote the screenplay for the film. An opera version of Pasażerka, which premiered (in concert) in Moscow in December 2006, opened at the National Opera in Warsaw on 8 October 2010. The libretto, based on Zofia Posmysz's novel, was written in Russian by Aleksandr Medvedev and the score by Mieczysław Weinberg, in 1967/8. It was banned by the Soviet censor. The 2010 production was co-produced by Bregenzer Festspiele (Austria), English National Opera (London) and the Teatro Real (Madrid). It was directed by David Pountney and the conductor was Gabriel Chmura. See http://www.teatrwielki.pl/repertuar/opera/kalendarium/pasazerka.html [accessed 25 March 2011].

Stanisław Wyrpiański, Akropolis [Kraków: Skład Księgarni Gebethnera, 1904]. A digitised version of this edition can be viewed via the following link: http://www.archive.org/details/akropolis dramat00raczgoog [accessed 11 October 2011].

See Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, trans. by Richard Fowler (London: Routledge, 2002). See also Franco Ruffini, ‘The Empty Room: Studying Jerzy Grotowski's Towards a Poor Theatre’ in Grotowski's Empty Room, ed. by Paul Allain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 93–115. A video recording of Grotowski's production of Akropolis was made by Peter Brook in 1968 (New York: Insight Media) and is in wide circulation. See also Magda Ramańska, ‘Between History and Memory: Auschwitz in Akropolis and Akropolis in Auschwitz’, Theatre Survey, 50 (2009), 223–50.

Mikhail Mirsky, The Reckoning (Der Kheshbn), 1963.

Seth Wolitz, ‘Performing a Holocaust play in Warsaw in 1963’ in Claude Schumacher (ed.), Staging the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 130–46 (p. 131).

Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

See Morlan Ty Rogers, Yedwabne: History and Memorial Book (Poland), http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/jedwabne/yedwabne.html [accessed 15 January 2011].

See http://www.radzilow.com/bikont.htm [accessed 15 January 2011] for an excerpt from Anna Bikont's book, translated by Łukasz Summer, My z Jedwabnego (We from Jedwabne) (Wydawnictwo Prószyński i S-ka, 2004).

The documentary Sąsiedzi (Neighbours) (2001). See http://www.radzilow.com/documentary.htm [accessed 21 January 2011].

See http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/about.asp Yad Vashem was established in 1953. Non-Jews who saved Jews at personal risk are honoured as ‘Righteous among the Nations’ in a dedicated garden within the memorial grounds. Poles constitute the largest national group within the Righteous among the Nations recognised by Yad Vashem. It is necessary here to take into account that Poland's Jewish community was the largest in Europe and only 10% of them survived. Somewhere in the region of two million ethnic Poles lost their lives duringthe Second World War. See http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/poland_WWII_casualties.htm [accessed 15 January 2011].

See Tim Whewell's article ‘Polish Anti-semitism Needs Examination’, Guardian, 30 November 2009 at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/30/antisemitism-poland-michal-kaminski [accessed 11 January 2011].

For introductory information, consult BBC News, Rembering Katyń, 70 Years Later, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8606126.stm [accessed 11 January 2011].

Please see http://www.electronicmuseum.ca/Poland-WW2/soviet_deportations/dapd_2.html [accessed 11 January 2011] for information about this aspect of the Second World War.

Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, The Neighbours Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

Jan Błoński, ‘Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto’ (The Poor Poles look at the Ghetto), Tygodnik Powszechny, 11 January 1987. The article can be accessed in translation at http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/eehistory/H200Readings/Topic4-R1.html [accessed 15 January 2011].

Stephen Pollard, ‘Poland's Kaminski is Not an Anti-Semite: he's a Friend to Jews’, Guardian, 9 October 2009. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/09/michal-kaminski-antisemitism) [accessed 15 January 2011].

Jessica Elgot, ‘Chief Rabbi of Poland: Kaminski's No Anti-Semite’, Jewish Chronicle Online, 29 October 2009. See http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/21411/chief-rabbi-poland-kaminskis-no-antisemite [accessed 16 January 2010].

Kate Connolly, ‘They were Wiped Out. It's our Katyn Trauma All Over Again’, Guardian, 11 April 2010. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/11/poland-president-plane-crash-kaczynski [accessed 16 January 2010].

Jay Merrick, ‘Miliband attacks anti-Semite Pole linked to Cameron’, Independent on Sunday, 2 August 2009. See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/miliband-attacks-antisemite-pole-linked-to-cameron-1766252 [accessed 16 January 2010].

49. Martin Bright and Simon Rocker, ‘Gordon Brown's bid to fix rift with UK Jews’, Jewish Chronicle, 12 November 2009. See http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/21907/gordon-browns-bid-%EF%AC%81x-rift-uk-jews [accessed 16 January 2010].

Rosa Prince, ‘David Cameron calls on Miliband to apologise over anti-Semitic attacks’, Telegraph, 30 October 2009. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6468589/David-Cameron-calls-on-David-Miliband-to-apologise-over-anti-Semitic-attacks.html [accessed 16 January 2010].

See Stephen Fry, ‘Poles, Politics and Politeness in the Age of Twitter’, http://www.stephenfry.com/2009/10/19/poles-politeness-and-politics-in-the-age-of-twitter/ [accessed 14 January 2010].

This included Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht and The Power of Yes by David Hare.

In 1966, Tom Stoppard's adaptation of Tango, written by Sławomir Mrożek and translated by Nicholas Bethell, was staged by the RSC at the Aldwych Theatre.

A literal translation of this surname is ‘Poland's end’.

Including one in 1993.

See Kosz-Koszewska, ‘Słobodzianek głos’. Translated by Teresa Murjas

For the most recent scholarship on the science of empathy, see Simon Baron-Cohen, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty (London: Allen Lane, 2011).

In the London production, sound and music were provided by a Klezmer band, which was located above the performance area, in the circle.

Discussion between Teresa Murjas and Ryan Craig in London, 24 August 2010.

See Gabriele Schwab's book Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2010).

See http://memorypolitics.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-book-on-trauma-haunting-legacies.html [accessed 26 March 2011].

Słobodzianek, Our Class, p. 36.

Mark Lawson, ‘How I Fluffed My Exit Lines’, Guardian, 20 November 2009. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/20/anger-play-exit-mid-show [accessed 16 January 2010].

Słobodzianek, Our Class, p. 69.

Ibid., pp. 42–44.

Neuberger, ‘Afterward’, p. 106.

Magdalena Kosz-Koszewska, ‘Słobodzianek głos o Jedwabnem w Anglii’, Gazeta Białystok, 30 September 2009. See http://bialystok.gazeta.pl/bialystok/1,35233,7094314,Slobodzianka_glos_o_Jedwabnem_w_Anglii.html [accessed 16 January 2011]. Translated by Teresa Murjas.

The production at Teatr na Woli opened on 16 October 2010 and the run continues, with somewhat sporadic programming. It is directed by Ondrej Spišák and designed by František Liptak. See http://teatrnawoli.pl/home/1847/index.html for further information.

Dominic Cavendish, ‘Is Our Class at the National Theatre such a Reliable History Lesson?’ Telegraph, 9November 2009. Seehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/6530381/Is-Our-Class-at-the-National-Theatre-really-such-a-reliable-history-lesson.html [accessed 17 January 2010].

Ibid.

Ibid.

See Maria Zawadzka, ‘After the “Nike” Award’, http://www.sprawiedliwi.org.pl/en/cms/news-archive/407,after-the-nike-award-the-premiere-of-our-class-by-tadeusz-slobodzianek/ [accesed 15 March 2011].

Mieke Bal, ‘Introduction', Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. by Bal, Jonathan V. Crewe and Leo Spitzer (Hanover: UPNE, 1999), pp. vii–xvii (p. vii).