Mr. Robert Sandler took his Jewish history class to see Our Class at the Classic Stage Theater last week. The play, about the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom, in which residents of a Polish village murdered hundreds of their Jewish neighbors was first produced in 2009, tracks 10 Jedwabne residents — half of them Jewish and half Catholic, with the majority of the characters based on real people — from 1925 through the pogrom and beyond.
The Jedwabne pogrom was thrust into the public light in 2001, when Jan Gross, a professor of history at Princeton University, discovered that despite public perception — and even a memorial in Jedwabne — the massacre of the village’s 1,600 Jews did not happen by the hands of the Nazis. Rather, it was the local Catholic Polish population who took the initiative in torturing, murdering and burning alive their neighbors. Gross’ revelation led Poland’s president to apologize to the international Jewish community, though many Poles remain in denial. I also organized a talk back with the cast that allowed the students to ask questions about the play! It was an unforgettable night! See a full size photo collage here.
