Tuesday, April 5, 2011

History Is Like a Play. When You Don't Like What's Written, Do a Little Rewrite

That, apparently, is the M.O. of a group of Poles who don't like a play dealing with the Jedwabne massacre, a horrific WW2 incident that, until quite recently, was thought to be the work of Nazis, but which was actually perpetrated by Poles. From the Globe and Mail:
...The play, by dramatist Tadeusz Slobodzianek, deals with the real-life massacre of as many as 1,600 Polish Jews by fellow Poles in the town of Jedwabne on July 10, 1941. The play, which had its English-language premiere at the National Theatre in London in 2009, draws heavily on the findings in Neighbors, a book by Polish-born U.S. sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross, published in 2001.
The four-page CPC [Canadian Polish Congress] “fact sheet” argues “several hundred Jews,” not 1,600, were “killed in a barn that was set on fire.” Moreover, the pogrom, it claims, was organized by the Nazis, with only about 40 “local Poles,” many of them “paid thugs,” participating in the murders. The “fact sheet” says Gross’s assertions have been “discredited” by other sources. According to CPC media spokesperson Hanna Sokolski, the play “explains the ‘situation’ through negative stereotypes,” and her organization is concerned about “the impact the play ... will have on audiences” with limited knowledge of “those dark times.”...
Yes, because once you put the massacre in the proper context (presumably of "those dark times" and not of the Poles' endemic and long-standing Judenhass) it really sounds...every bit as bad as does sans the context.

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