Sixty years after the 1,600 Jews of the Polish town of Jedwabne were murdered in July 1941, a new memorial was erected.
This one no longer proclaimed the crime to be yet another Nazi atrocity. Recent evidence revealed that the massacre in which most of the Jews were burned alive after being herded into a barn, was in fact the result of a pogrom carried out by the victims’ neighbours.
It is on this version of events, now largely accepted in Poland, that Polish playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek has based his masterly work. Our Class is populated by a 10-strong group of 10 Jews and Catholics who we first see as children sharing a classroom. Later they become the adult victims and perpetrators of the pogrom.
Slobodzianek — whose play is elegantly translated by Ryan Craig — stunningly combines testimony with acted-out scenes. Each character delivers a version of events. Combined, they arrive at a greater truth.
Anglo-Iranian director Bijan Sheibani sets his beautifully performed production within a simple rectangle. And although Jedwabne is never named, there can be no better memorial to the Jews who died there.
