Animal Farm still hits raw nerve for Poles

Tue, June 9, 2009
The production at London’s Polish school underscores totalitarianism that threatens freedom in the world today
By KATE DUBINSKI

In the darkened school gymnasium, as the teenagers shout “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others,” with Polish communist songs interspersed in the background, it’s hard to know who finds the moment most significant.

Is it the watching parents, who remember being forced to sing those songs in school, who immediately, unconsciously, sit a little straighter when the drum starts to beat?

Is it the teens on stage, most born here in Canada but who hear stories about the forbidden play their parents weren’t allowed to read?

Or is it the teacher who remembers the years before coming here, when teaching George Orwell’s Animal Farm in Poland wasn’t even an option?

This isn’t your typical North American high school multimedia production of Animal Farm; this rendition comes from the deep pit of understanding oppression and fear.

It comes with propaganda songs, and there’s no glossing over the lies, the executions and the misinformation campaigns that beam up on the screen behind the performing students.

Reality and fable intermingle during this production at London’s Polish school, held on Saturdays at an elementary school beside the Polish church on Hill Street.

“When we were reading the book in class, it’s a crazy thing because my parents tell me about how they had to stand in line to get food (in Poland) — it’s good to be able to perform this play because (oppression) still goes on around the world,” says Kristina Hamernik, 17, who portrayed the villain pig Napolean, a mirror of Joseph Stalin.

Hamernik was born in Canada, as were more than half of her classmates. When I went to Polish school — every Saturday morning as a kid, until I rebelled against the early wake-up calls — the vast majority of my peers were born in Poland to parents who fled before the Solidarity movement brought down the communist government and led to the country’s first democratic elections 20 years ago.

The Grade 11 and 12 students presenting the play on Saturday embraced their roles and dedicated the play to “those who resist dictatorship and who fight for freedom.”

The students are taking a credit course from teacher Jaroslaw Moczarski that counts toward their high school diploma.

Moczarski has been teaching Polish school for almost 20 years. He’s seen the demographics of his students change from first- to second-generation Canadians. But it’s as important to teach Animal Farm now as it ever was because the threat of totalitarian regimes is as real today as it was during the Cold War, he says.

“When I left my country, I was a teacher of history and I couldn’t teach real history because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to do my job anymore,” Moczarski says.

“There are good ideas to take from this play. I think the students get it — I hope they get it.”

The parents get it. My mom said she had tears in her eyes when she heard an old communist propaganda march. Moczarski, who is happy to be teaching the play and quizzing his students, gets it. The students who talked about modern-day examples of “propaganda and secret half-truths and people who naively believe them,” get it.

The audience, mesmerized by the portrayal of greed, and inequality, gets it, too.

Source: London Free Press