Rafal Betlejewski, "I Miss You, Jew!" Re-writing Polish Identity: Including Jedwabne into the Collective Narrative

In 2000 a Princeton professor, Jan Tomasz Gross, published his book "The Neighbours" introducing the problem of the Polish "home-made" Holocaust. The book was received with disbelief and anger – the defence mechanism on full display. But it originated a process which could not be stopped: the re-writing of a Polish narrative and re-building of identity. For me, as a performer who is particularly interested in identity and self-labelling, this was an epiphany on a national scale. It was a rare chance to challenge the core beliefs constituting the National myth. It was also a learning process: in an instant I realized that all I knew about my country's past was wrong. Was I merely ignorant or a victim of an institutionalized lie? In 2005 I set off on a journey that took me to all kinds of surprising places: big cities, little villages, jail cells, burning barns, and to the core of what Poland is and once was.