Blane uses blinding lights from behind to stun the audience, and effectively evokes a tense train journey with lighting from the wings. While Strathairn’s performance is captivating enough to command attention on its own merits, he is aided considerably by Zach Blane’s lighting design and the sound design by Roc Lee. For the rest of his life, Karski considered his mission a failure even as leaders of the nations who ignored him proclaimed him a hero. Strathairn fully embodies the rage and frustration inside this essentially humble man as he struggled to convince those who could do something about the genocide to act.

Denying reality was the less demanding and less painful choice. Left unspoken is the subtext: If Frankfurter did believe Karski, Frankfurter would feel responsibility to act. Frankfurter clarifies that he does not think Karski is lying rather, Frankfurter cannot bring himself to believe that anyone could treat fellow humans in such a way. Frankfurter listens in silence as Karski methodically recounts what he has seen, finally telling the Polish witness that he does not believe him. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, a Jew who was close to Roosevelt. In one particularly jarring scene, Karski meets with U.S. With nothing more than his own integrity and honesty as evidence, Karski set off to convince Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and other Allied leaders that a systematic effort to exterminate Polish Jewry was underway, putting the lie to the later claims that Allied leaders did not know of the looming Holocaust until the end of the war. He was soon charged with serving as a human camera, getting firsthand knowledge of German atrocities against Jews and other Poles inside occupied Poland. Three months after the start of the war, Kozielewski joined the Polish Underground, and adopted Karski as his nom de guerre (later making it his legal name). Made an officer in the days before the German invasion, he was captured by Soviet forces and held prisoner in present-day Ukraine, barely escaping the Katyn massacre of ranking Polish personnel. He carried this sense of cross-cultural solidarity into his early career as a diplomat. Karski, a Polish Roman Catholic born Jan Kozielewski in Łódź just months before the start of the First World War, was raised by his parents to be respectful and protective of their Jewish neighbors who often faced bullying from the young Jan’s friends. …a superb achievement of both witnessing and stage drama…a powerful production that demands attention. He is the ideal choice to originate the role of Jan Karski in this one-man show conceived of and written by director Derek Goldman and Clark Young. Strathairn, known for film roles such as “Good Night, and Good Luck” and “Nomadland,” has made a career of playing understated and noble figures, both real and fictional.

Klein Theatre, is a searing and intimate study of a hero who thought he was a failure, portrayed with strength and vulnerability by Academy Award-nominated actor David Strathairn.

“Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski,” now running at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Michael R. David Strathairn in “Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski” at Shakespeare Theatre Company.

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