Where she goes, we will follow.
Paulina's Journey is beginning!
“PAULINA” is a research and performance project confronting challenges of translation, memory, and identity. It is centered on the discovery of a text: the Holocaust testimony of a woman named Paulina Hirsch, and on a growing exchange between Michelle Levy (New York) and Patrycja Dołowy (Warsaw).
Michelle is a granddaughter of Polish Jewish immigrants to New York. She was searching for records on her great-grandmother in Poland when she found her relative Paulina's testimony and met Patrycja. Patrycja is a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors in Warsaw. She draws out marginalized stories – often of women – connected with Jewish memory in Poland. She helped Michelle decode Paulina's testimony, becoming an integral part of this story.
Paulina was a wife and mother who lost her family and had to fend for herself in occupied Poland. Her testimony is an impersonal, official document that is both specific and vague. As much as we try to know her, the heroine remains absent from her story. What we do know are the details of where she went. Guided by happenstance and the continual reminder that things are not always what they seem, we are taking a journey together to see what we may discover by revisiting Paulina's story in the places where it happened.
On April 25th, we begin following Paulina across Poland and Ukraine. We invite you to follow us. From *Siedlce* to *Włodawa* to *Czartorysk* to *Lviv* to *Ropczycze* to *Wieliczka* to *Krakow* to *Lviv* to *Lublin* to *Warsaw* (to *Saska Kepa* to *Centrum* to *Wola* to *Wesoła* to *Rembertów* to *Grochów* to *Legionowo* to *Henryków*) to *Susz* to *Elblag* to *Malbork* to *Łodz* to *Krakow*.
