‘Until the outbreak of the war Jedwabne was a quiet town, and Jewish lives there differed little from those of their fellows anywhere else in Poland.’
– Jan Tomasz Gross, 2000  

There was a time when Poles, Jews and Ukrainians peacefully co-existed. They built communities together, took part in each other’s holidays, lived in mixed families, shard their joys and sorrows. There was also a time when those same people murdered one another, burned down houses, and turned from neighbours into hangmen.

The years went by and we believed the cruel story was finished, the Holocaust, Jedwabne, Volhynia were just memories of vast sorrow and guilt. Difficult, but historically irrefutable experiences. We asked for forgiveness and we forgave. We wanted to start over. We wanted to remember less the murderers than the just, those who risked their own lives to save others.
 

Investigating archives, listening to the tales of our families and loved ones, juxtaposing Jan Tomasz Gross’s ‘Neighbours’ and Witek Szabłowski’s ‘Righteous Neighbours’, we try to understand the stories that have shaped the place we live. In a world where war is again just outside our border and the language of hatred seeps more and more easily into everyday life, this play inquires into the fragility of neighbourly relations. Into whether history has truly ended. And into what we prefer not to – or cannot – remember.