This wonderful play came to Loughborough for the first national Holocaust Memorial Day. The play was written by Renata Choros from archived testiments and performed by her school theatre group from Zamosc in Poland. It is now being developed as a key resource for all schools in Britain in partnership with the Holocaust Educational Trust. It is hoped to publish the play with lesson plans and music for all British schools in October, ready for performance around the second Holocaust Memorial Day on 29th January 2002.
Having toured schools in Loughborough and Quorn and receiving public performances at the Polish Community Centre in Loughborough as well as in Zamosc itself, the play won the top award at the Chelm schools theatre Festival in March 2001. "
I CAN SEE THEIR SHADOWS EVERYWHERE...".
| The town of Zamosc (pronounced zamosh), built by a renaissance Italian architect, is one of the most beautiful in Poland. During the holocaust the city was picked out as for occupation and was to be renamed Himmlerstadt. In the plan to redesign Europe in the second world war it therefore has the most tragic history. The play is about that history, as you will see from the synopsis below. It is performed by young people from the town with the lead performer being the author, poet, Renata Choros. | |
The group of 8 players from a Theatre Group in Zamosc arrived in England on 29th January 2001 for one week to perform the commemorative piece for the national Holocaust Memorial Day:
I CAN SEE THEIR SHADOWS EVERYWHERE..."
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written by Mrs Renata M. Choros, form teacher of theatrical class
in III Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace school. Renata writes:
"The main protagonist of the play is an old teacher from Zamojszczyzna who has just now decided to publish her war memoirs connected with her pupils of her village. |
During the extermination of all the inhabitants, she was extremely lucky and did not suffer a similar fate simply because she was picking up firewood on a nearby forest at that time. Fortunately, she managed to hide, but to her despair, she witnessed the killing of her closest family. She hoped she would be able to assuage the feeling of anguish but to no avail. Especially the massacre of thousands of innocent children has still remained intense in her memory.
Now this lonely woman is sitting in her room trying to write down recurrent memories. She remembers teaching eleven children, three Jewish and eight Polish, from the neighbourhood in her house near the forest. And as she is reading their names in her old worn out copy-book, a war-time school register, all memories are coming back to her vividly. Only five out of eleven children managed to survive. The recollections of the brutally murdered seven evoke seven scenes in mime portraying each of the surviving pupils. Not only does the teacher's narration form a link between all the scenes but it also provides significant information concerning the scale of the tragedy of the Zamojszczyzna Children and the Holocaust in this area. It brings back the memory of inhumane methods of Jewish and Polish people's extermination, their deportations from Zamojszczyzna on an enormous scale and the German settlement in German occupied Poland which were parts of such projects as General Eastern Plan (General Plan Ost) and General Settlement Plan (Generalsiedlungsplan). The narration mentions all the most important places of massacres of the Jewish and Polish nation. It also draws attention to the specific character of the Holocaust in Zamojszczyzna where the Jewish and Polish fate were bound together.
As the teacher finishes her memories she feels that her life is drawing to a close and before she departs from this world she wants to leave her evidence of those days. It is her debt she owes to the murdered."
| The play has been written for our national Holocaust
Memorial Day on 27th January 2001, and was performed for
schools who have been studying the subject and
participating in school assemblies etc on that theme for
the previous fortnight. . The events are not forgotten in Zamosc today. Far from it. For examplem a marathon race in honour of the children of Zamojszczyzna (Bieg Pokoju Pamieci Dzieci Zamojszczyzny) takes place annually being a four-stage long-distance race, during which Polish and foreign participants cover the distance of 100km within 4 days. They run along routes in Roztocze forest and through the city of Zamosc. Disabled people also take part in the race. It will be held on August 2001 for the fifteenth time. |
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The Rotunda where so many of the local population were shot rather than transported remains one of the most powerful monuments in southern Poland.
Web links:
http://www.zamosc.pl/ang/start.htm
http://www.holocaustmemorialday.gov.uk/
http://www.het.org.uk/
http://www.bethshalom.com/
http://www.iwm.org.uk/lambeth/holoc-ex1.htm
The trip was made possible by the generosity of local sponsors and the Borough Council. Other expenses were met by the Twinning Association members or by accommodating the young people with others of their own age, and with local families who are of Polish descent or with members of the Association. The Association and schools ensured they had transport and meals. Rawlins Community College was the major educational partner in the venture, which also has the support of the Charnwood Arts and the Cultural Services Division of the Borough Council. Besides the public performance on Friday 2nd February 2001, the play was also performed for Rawlins Community College, Burleigh Community College and DeLisle RC Secondary School in Loughborough. The play was featured on BBC TV East Midlands Today on 31st January 2001.
| Max Hunt, Chairman of Loughborough Twinning
Association in partnership with Rawlins Community College, Charnwood Arts and Charnwood Borough Council Holocaust Memorial Day Working Party. 58 William Street, Loughborough, Leics. GB LE11 3BZ from whom a copyright pre-publication script may be available. |
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