„(A)pollonia” at the Theatre Confrontations Festival in Lublin

„(A)pollonia”, premiered in Warsaw on May 16th, 2010, is based, among others, on texts by Aeschylus, Euripides, Hanna Krall, J. M. Coetzee and Jonathan Littell.

The performance focuses on the problem of offering and sacrifice in the context of responsibility, which becomes an entirely human matter. The director raises questions not onlyabout the sense of sacrifice, but also about its consequences, the boundaries of suffering.

The central figures of the play are three women: Iphigenia, Alcestis and Apolonia Machczyńska. As we can read in the description of the play on the website of the Warsaw Nowy Teatr, these are “three sacrifices of human lives, of fate, destiny and wars, sacrifices both forced and voluntary. These offerings are made in mythical times, when gods still interfered in human affairs, and in the 20th century, where it was already too late for divine interventions and the fate of the victims has lost its literary character of tragedy and has become the subject of a painful reportage. (…) Warlikowski destroys all beliefs concerning the problem of sacrifice. Should the solemn acts of sacrifice raise doubts? What if one sacrifice results in other victims? Is it ever possible to stop this march?”.

Iphigenia, sacrificed by her father Agamemnon, resigns herself to her fate for the sake of her homeland. Alcestis, a loving wife, decides to sacrifice her own life to save her husband Admet. The third main character of the play is Apolonia Machczyńska-Świątek, a Righteous Among the Nations who helped over twenty Jews during the Second World War.

In 1942 Apolonia Machczyńska-Świątek gave shelter in her house in Kock to 11 Jews who managed to escape from the local ghetto. Although she had three children and was heavily pregnant, she did not hesitate to help them. She organized false papers for the Jews and moved them to Warsaw.

Among them was Rywka Goldfinger, who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Israel after the Second World War. The Righteous organized so-called “Aryan papers” for her. She also helped a few other refugees, whom she hid in her basement.

In January 1943 Apolonia Machczyńska-Świątek was helping Jews hiding in a forest near her house. A Pole working for the Nazis denounced her. Although the Righteous was warned by a German policeman and ran to alert the Jews – they did not manage to escape and were all killed. She herself hid in the village Plebanki, where the Nazis found her and shot her.

In 1997 Apolonia Machczyńska was honored with the title „Righteous Among the Nations” for saving Jews during the Second World War. More about Apolonia Machczyńska.