“All I can say is that I saw it, and it is the truth.” – Jan Karski

In December, the 7th and 8th grades attended a student matinee showing of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. We were all stunned and impressed with the one-man performance by the passionate and skilled actor David Strathairn. The show is the true story of an ordinary man in Poland who tried his utmost to bring attention to the dehumanization and destruction of the Jews and others in his native Poland after the German invasion in 1939.

The students were not only enthralled by the story, but also appreciative of the hard work it took to put on the show including the research, the writing, and the performance. At the post-show talk with the show’s creators, our students asked the most questions of all the student groups there, and proudly proclaimed (as a group) that their class was Jewish Studies! 

Here’s a sample of the student reflections after the show:

• It was inspiring that someone not Jewish would risk his life to try and help save the Jewish people.
• The choice to do a one man show made it feel more personal.
• I cried multiple times!
• Seeing a play made me understand history differently than reading a book or even watching a movie.
• I didn’t think it would work with just one person, but it did!
• We could visualize the actual places where [the character] was.
• It felt immersive. I was pulled in.
• [We could see] how the character was trapped in the situation of war.
• Focusing on the story was easy because of the simple staging.
• The actor transformed from one character to another; that must have been hard to do.
• He did so many different accents; that was amazing!

Trish Tillman
Middle School English & Drama

Jan Karski was a courier for the Polish Underground resistance during World War II. In 1942, Karski volunteered to walk through the Warsaw Ghetto and a Nazi extermination camp before traveling to London to report to the Allied Nations on the conditions of occupied Poland and, specifically, the Holocaust. – Learn more from the production program.