The format follows the lives of 10 members of a class of students – both Catholics and Jews – from 1925 to the present.  In the first half of the show, we see the light-hearted world of childhood give way to religious tensions as soon Jews are pushed to the back of the classroom.  The, soviet occupation in 1939 ramps us the hostility between the collaborators and the resistance-fighters – and in 1941 with the arrival of the Nazis, the community’s deep seated antisemitism leads to beatings, torture, rape and eventual a mass round up of Jews  – burning them collectively in a barn.  Act 2 of the play walks us through the various destinies of the surviving characters.

The play uses every device of the stage.  Blackboards, school desks and chairs are used to create multiple environments; ladders are used to stage the plotting against the Jews, chalk drawings done by the actors let us know where the story is taking us, live musicians capture the emotion of the changing scenes, and, in perhaps the most dramatic moment of all helium balloons are used to represent all the Jews locked inside a country barn – and as they are set on fire – the balloons are burst one after the other.  It makes me shake even thinking about this moment on stage.  There are many, many stories about World War II and the atrocities that occurred but few are as brutal as what can happen when the war led neighbor to go against neighbor – classmate to go against classmate.