Class in Hate

I saw Our Class on Friday, a new play by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, presently being performed at the National Theatre here in London and running until January.

Set in Poland and following the passage through time of a group of school chums, Catholic and Jewish, Our Class is a ‘Holocaust play’ but not in the form that one might imagine. For it tells a story that many Poles would rather forget, did forget for many years: that Nazi anti-Semitism harmonised with an older tradition of hatred, one with deep roots in their country. By ever tightening circles of fear and hate the story moves through war and occupation to the Jedwabne Pogrom of July 1941, in which Jews were massacred not by Germans but by their fellow Poles.

Paradoxically this is a story that could only really be told after the demise of Communism and the emergence of the new Poland. Previously it raised all sorts of complicated issues: that of Polish people towards the Jewish community in their midst, and that of the post-war Communist authorities towards the political significance of the Holocaust.

The official investigation into the Holocaust in Poland began with the setting up of a commission to gather evidence of war crimes just after the conclusion of the war, which included the Jewish Historical Institute (JHI), a body of independent historians. This was a time when Poland was not yet fully controlled by the Communists, so some degree of openness and objectivity was still possible.

Things changed from 1948 onwards. In 1950 the JHI was placed under the control of the Ministry of Education, with all inquiry not approved of by the Party coming to an end. The new line was to stress the passive response of the Jews to the Nazis, while minimising Polish anti-Semitism and collaboration. It was said that the western emphasis on the persecution of the Jews had only obscured the persecution of the Poles. The official attitude towards the Jews was further modified by the emergence of the state of Israel. Now anti-Semitism was replaced by anti-Zionism; but both still drew on the traditional stereotype of the greedy, manipulative and exploitative Jew.

After Wladyslaw Gomulka came to power, following the 'Polish October' of 1956, old forms of Polish nationalism received at least a partial rehabilitation. This was accompanied by old anti-Semitism wearing new clothes. Jewish people were removed from their positions in both the army and the civil service, while at the same time an active press campaign was launched against all of those associated with the former Stalinist regime. The particular Jewish suffering associated with the Holocaust slipped even further into the background.

The political struggles of the 1960s saw the emergence of even more strident forms of anti-Jewish nationalism, most associated with the group around Mieczyslaw Moczar, notorious both for his xenophobia and his anti-Semitism. After the victory of Israel in the Six Day War of 1967 the position for Poland's dwindling Jewish minority became steadily worse, with all sorts of people being attacked for 'Zionist sympathies', whether they had them or not. The whole programme embraced Holocaust history. Any and every attempt to define this as a uniquely Jewish event was denounced as 'part of a chauvinist Zionist propaganda plot to justify the existence of Israel and turn the world against Communism.' It was, so it was said, a new 'Jewish world conspiracy.' In 1968 all the records of the JHI were taken over by the government. Subsequent to this a conference was held to 'rebut the slanderous campaign of lies in the West...especially with reference to the accusations about the alleged participation of Poles in the annihilation of the Jewish population.' By now the JHI had all but ceased to exist.

The fall of Communism has been accompanied by a new openness; a willingness, at least by some, to confront uncomfortable truths, including the truth of Jedwabne and other matters touching on the relations between the Jewish and Catholic communities during the Holocaust.

The play itself is a remarkable if not entirely comfortable experience. It’s long, three hours long, so it requires stamina on more level than one. The ensemble, only ten strong, are utterly convincing as they move through the childhood and dreams of the 1920s to the adulthood and nightmares of the 1940s. All the performances are memorable but for me the outstanding one was that of Sinead Matthews as Dora, who dreamt of being a film star only to end by being burned alive with her baby and some 1600 other people in a barn. It’s stark; there are no visual distractions; much of the horror is conveyed by mime. More than anything the play is effective as a kind of accusation, delivered from the past to the present.

There aspects of the past that I think we would all wish to forget, not just the Poles. But remembrance is, after all, a human duty.

Büchner, Pain and God

I simply love the plays of Georg Büchner, arguably one of the most startlingly original German dramatists ever. I recall his commentary on the work of Spinoza, particularly his proposition that God exists necessarily; for if we ''think'' God, then God must exist. To this contention, taken from Spinoza's belief in the primacy of mind, Büchner says 'But what compels us to think an entity that can only be thought of as a being?', which he follows shortly after with this thought;

If one accepts the definition of God, then one must admit the existence of God. But what justifies us in making this definition?

Reason?

It knows imperfections.

Feeling?

It knows pain.

Pain, the phenomena of pain and suffering, is central to Büchner. It is through pain that the eponymous hero in Lenz achieves his most mystical experience; through pain that Lena recognises the route to redemption. It is, for Büchner, through pain that one enters into the presence of God.

A Doll's House

Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House is a wonderful play, cutting, with great economy of words, through the lies and hypocrisy of a Victorian marriage. I saw it performed in London last autumn and made some notes afterwards;

a) Christina and Nils were forced apart by circumstances, chiefly economic circumstances, although the never ceased to be attracted one to the other. In order to support her mother and brothers, Christina entered into a loveless marriage. Now her husband is dead she has come to town, not just to look for employment, but to make contact with the lover of her youth. Here one needs to pay particular attention to their conversation in Act Three, where she tells Nils that they are both castaways clinging to the wreck of their lives, and they should join forces because they need each other. For Nils this turns into a moment of recognition and reformation. His former absence of morals, his opportunism and his cynicism, were all born out of disappointment and anger at having lost Christina in the first place.

b) Christina has come to understand that that the Helmers' marriage cannot continue on the basis of lies and deception, and that Nils' letter will provide the necessary catharsis. Remember what she says to Nils: "...it's quite incredible the things I've witnessed in this house in the last twenty-four hours. Helmer must know everything. This unhappy secret must come out. Those two must have the whole thing out between them. All this secrecy and deception, it just can't go on."

c) Christina's epiphany, her moment of revelation, is the key dramatic moment in the whole play. She has been considering killing herself to avoid bringing disgrace on her husband, though all of her sacrifices and her deceptions, the way in which she obtained the loan in the first place, were solely for his benefit. She is convinced that Torvald loves her enough to be prepared to make his own sacrifice; to reject Nils attempts at blackmail; to make things public and take the whole blame on himself. After all, did he not just say before reading the letter "...I wish you were threatened by some terrible danger so I could risk everything, body and soul, for your sake." But he does not; he proposes to give in, while continuing to blame Nora, even saying that she will not be allowed to bring up her own children.

Now she knows the truth. At that point she begins to stop loving Torvald. Any residual feeling is killed by his feelings of relief when Nils returns the IOU; his assumption that things can now return as they were; that Nora will once again become his 'little song bird.' She tells him that is impossible, that she has been treated for too long as a plaything, living in a Doll's House. In those crucial moments she growns up and beyond Nils and their sham marriage, breaking the confines and restrictions of her Doll's House forever. She is free.