His family left Poland after surviving the Holocaust; now Michael Rubenfeld wants to find healing in his art

When Canadian artist and cultural producer Michael Rubenfeld visited Poland in 2013, his main goal was to reconnect with the country that his mom and grandparents left after surviving the Holocaust. He had no idea how the trip would change the trajectory of his life. 

On the trip, Rubenfeld met Magda Koralewska, the woman who would become his wife, and through her was introduced to Poland's small but vibrant Jewish community. Together, they co-created a Jewish art and activism collective, FestivALT, which has been a leading force in a revitalization of the Jewish arts community in Poland. 

Rubenfeld's interest in his Jewish-Polish roots continues in his theatre work. He co-wrote and premiered a new play with Polish director Marcin Wierzchowski, Alte Hajm/Stary Dom (Old Home), about the Jewish ghosts of the past literally coming into a Polish home. The play examines the reckoning of how World War II has affected not just Jewish families, but also Polish ones.

FestivALT is currently hosting a benefit for Ukrainian refugees called Fight With Art, an online auction of 40 Ukrainian artists' work.

CBC Arts spoke with Rubenfeld about what his works means for Polish Jews, his work with Ukrainian artists and the strange conception of Alte Hajm.

I noticed a shift in your work recently. In 2015, for instance, you produced We Keep Coming Back, a play about you and your mother coming to Poland to explore your Jewish family's roots in the country. But now you're making work like Alte Hajm, which is more focused on the bigger questions for Polish Jews. Why this shift?

This is the closest I've come to really understanding why I'm always doing what I'm doing — I think because it's also so personal. I have a grander, very sincere belief that this negative relationship that the Jewish people have to Poland is a burden that needs to be released.

70 per cent of Europe's Ashkenazi Jews were living in Poland. It's where we're from. The war, and what happened during the war, was so traumatic that it really broke us away from the people that we had been.

We need to find ways to let this part of the world back into our identities. I think it has the potential to be really useful and really healing, and a good way to start thinking about contemporary trauma in relationship to the Holocaust.

Like you, I'm also a grandchild of Polish Jews, one of whom is a Holocaust survivor. And, honestly, I bristle hearing you say this. Look at what Poland did to my family! Why do I need to heal with Poland? 

My great grandmother was given up for a pound of sugar because that's what you would get if you gave up a Jew. It's very easy for me to go, "Screw that person who did that, how dare they?" But I also was like, "How starving was their family? What situation were they in?" I just don't think we can comprehend the reality of this place during the war, the insanity of war. We're not equipped for war.

Logically, I understand. Emotionally, it's hard for me to grapple with. But let's move on. 

Speaking of war, we're seeing the reality of war you mentioned happening for both the Ukrainian and Russian people. And FestivALT is fundraising for Ukrainian relief through an art auction. What's it like being in Poland, where your family experienced genocide, while helping Ukranians fleeing genocide?

When the war in Ukraine began, which many would perceive as a genocidal attack, we were very aware that we felt we had to be involved. I think we all felt it personally. Then we started to think of ourselves as an organization and our reason for being, and if we did not get involved, it almost felt like we would be hypocritical somehow. 

The irony is not lost on me, or us, as an organization. FestivALT's location is in the former Krakow ghetto, and we're there on purpose. We wanted to be there, negotiating as living Jews on the site of a genocide against Jewish people. 

Being on the site of a genocide against Jews also comes out in Alte Hajm, your most recent play about Poles living in a house where Jewish ghosts from their past come to haunt them.

This is what we're trying to make work about. How do we actually negotiate this contemporary moment in Polish society in relationship to its Jewish histories and its perspectives of the Jew in a contemporary space? 

My great grandmother was given up for a pound of sugar because that's what you would get if you gave up a Jew. It's very easy for me to go, 'Screw that person who did that, how dare they?' But I also was like, 'How starving was their family?'- Michael Rubenfeld, artist

The journey of that play was myself and my collaborator, director Marcin Wierzchowski. We met because he saw We Keep Coming Back in Białystok. He was very affected by the questions it was asking about the Jew in a Polish context.  

Marcin had done two shows that had Jewish narratives, but had never actually worked with Jews. 

Really?!

He's not alone in that. A lot of non-Jewish Poles have Jews in their work.

It's kind of bizarre, as a Jewish person, to be like, "Oh, there's Jews, these characters are all over the place, there's Jews everywhere, but not really!"

Because of the way that political correctness does or does not work in this country, it's okay to make things about a culture that might not be a part of what you're making. Whereas could you imagine an Indigenous festival that's run by someone who's not Indigenous? 

No, that would be bad!

So as a Jew, l was like, "You know, it might be valuable if you included a Jewish voice in your theatre that includes Jewish narratives."

Marcin and I started a two-year conversation that was about questioning who we are as peoples, Jew and non-Jew. We both have these traumas that stem from the same moment in history. But then we have such different narratives inside Poland versus outside Poland. 

What Poles are raised to believe about the Second World War is so different than what Jews are raised to believe. Most Poles in school are taught that they were first victims and then saviours of the Jews.

Whereas for us, it's like, "All the Poles were terrible, they hated the Jews!" That was just the narrative you understood. Then you come to Poland, and those two things colliding is really fascinating. 

Fascinating, yes. But also hard?

I moved to Poland, I've come here. It's not comfortable or easy, but I've actually done it.

We're putting our money where our mouth is.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.