Our Class

Based on a real event which occurred in Poland during the Second World War when, in the small Polish town of Jedwabne, according to some references 300 and according to others 1,600 Jews were cruelly killed. The long-concealed truth about the event - that the slaughter was actually perpetrated by their fellow Polish townspeople and not by the Nazis - came out only a few years ago. After the war, in fact, this horrifying slaughter was of course kept secret, and the survivors - the perpetrators and the victims alike - had to continue to coexist, with all their personal wounds, guilt and revenge.

The author of this virtuosically written play almost documentarily follows the fate of ten pupils of a perfectly ordinary school class. Through an elaborate intertwinement of destinies, he wants to show the horrendous consequences of both the Stalinist and Nazi ideological indoctrination that caused a complete schism and hatred among people, burdening them with collective guilt and its consequences which determine and mark them still today. Or as Wladek, one of the survivors of this immensely sad and at the same time instructive story, puts it: "I have always believed that truth would triumph in the end."

Post-performance talk with the artists in the Mezzanine.