“A Real Pain” and Memory in Poland

By Cara Williams

At the beginning of last month, I embarked on a semester of remembering pain. Traveling to another country or studying abroad conjured images of a carefree vacation, trying new foods, or learning interesting facts. A semester in Poland, however, is darker – though the country is beautiful and the people are kind, the land is haunted by memories of a painful past. Walk around in practically any Polish city and you will find remnants of pain, whether it be bullet marks in buildings, sites of burned synagogues, or old towns that look just a little too new. Pain is carried in Poland not only by city structures but by the individuals who remember. As an American with no Jewish or Polish heritage, I always perceived the Holocaust as happening long ago, a thing of the past. I didn’t fully understand how incredibly fresh its pain was until I began walking the streets of Poland and learning its history.

I first watched A Real Pain prior to my departure to Poland and wondered how I would react to my own Holocaust tour (because a trip around Poland is indeed a Holocaust tour). The film follows two cousins who travel to Poland to take part in a Holocaust tour to remember their grandmother, recently deceased, who grew up in Poland. The cousins who are starkly different – one free spirited and disjointed and the other neurotic and tense – join a group of equally different individuals, including a recent divorcee, an academic, a convert to Judaism, and a retired Jewish couple. However, they all have something in common, – they traveled to Poland to remember pain. They want to see; they want to feel. The film explores how pain is felt on a personal level, intergenerationally within families, and as a human race. Despite the character’s background or any individual experiences, all humans know and are affected by pain.

The word “tour” cannot effectively explain my – or the film characters’ – time in Poland. The word tour is usually associated with a sort of romantic adventure. A typical tour on a trip abroad might include wandering around on cobblestone streets, trying local cuisine, or learning history that will soon be forgotten when the tour ends. My “tour” is rather three months spent in Poland, living, learning, and traveling across many cities. Within my first two months in Poland, I have thoroughly explored Gdansk, Sejny, Warsaw, and Krakow. I have also seen 3 death camps – Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Lety u Pisku. I would rather call my time here a time of experience than a tour, and I believe the same goes for the characters in the film. There is an element of depth to the emotion that comes with seeing these cities and sites of mass murder that brings a “tour” into something metaphysical. The characters in the film, too, mock the word “tour”. It is ironic when a word associated with pleasant is deployed when such pain is involved.

It is impossible to predict how one will react to such an experience until they can physically experience it. One particularly impactful scene shows Kieran Culkin’s character, Benji Kaplan, spiraling into a meltdown while traveling first class by train across Poland. Sitting in the compartment, he thinks about his ancestors who were forced into suffocating train cars and led to their death. His survivor’s guilt is visceral, leading to his breakdown and having to leave the first-class car. Although I cannot say I have seen a reaction like this on my travels in Poland, I have noticed how small things can trigger guilt and painful memories. I remember a tour of the old town in Krakow in which the tour guide pointed out a building that was once a synagogue, now a bustling restaurant. The moment was brief – we looked at the building and moved on. But I found my mind lingering on it; thinking about the pain covered up by a new coat of paint and bright lights, and the guilt I felt about how little I knew about those who had spent hours there at prayer.

Reactions to these triggers also vary greatly. Like the characters in the film, some people cry, some take photos, some look around avoidantly. I’ve seen a couple posing in front of graves at a Jewish cemetery in Krakow, people looking intently at their phones rather than the sites, and tear-filled eyes while looking at monuments. Some people are tourists; some people are visitors. The visitors are those that remember. They have intention in their experiences regardless of how they react.

The guilt and pain associated with remembering is just as common as the stories of survival and the overcoming of trauma. During one scene in A Real Pain the group goes around and tells the stories of their family members. Jesse Eisenburg’s character, David Kaplan, describes his grandmother’s survival as a “similar story” – that she had survived through “a thousand miracles” before going on to tell the story of her success in New York after the war ended. This line reminded me of something Konstanty Gebert, a Jewish and Polish professor, activist, and journalist told me on a tour of the Warsaw Ghetto. He told us about his own family’s survival that I found incredibly moving. I asked him if he had written about his family and their miracles. He told me no, that those stories were “a dime a dozen” – anyone who survived did so by a thousand miracles. His stories demonstrate a theme that the film touches on as well – we are not restricted to only remembering the pain or tragedy in people’s lives. We can remember their survival stories, and the joy they experienced and brought to others.

So, how are we to deal with this pain and joy in remembering? Benji dealt with it by giving into the pain – turning to drugs and becoming paralyzed by the dark reality of what the earth beneath us holds. David dealt with it by forgetting – categorizing his own pain as unextraordinary and trying his best to get through each day without thinking about the weight he carries. I think the answer is found in one of the last scenes in the movie. At the end of their time in Poland, Benji and David visit the home their grandmother grew up in, now inhabited by a different family. They stand outside for a while, and unsure of what to do, they put a rock on the doorstep. This action symbolized the Jewish tradition of placing stones on graves when visiting cemeteries. Though their grandmother’s final resting place is somewhere in America and thus their action isn’t traditionally “correct”, they do it to say: I was here physically. I was here mentally. I care, and I remember.
In my own journey around Poland (my own version of A Real Pain) I am trying to put a mental stone everywhere I go. I will remember the pain that haunts Poland. I will remember the stories of the people who died and the stories of the people who lived. I cannot change anything that has happened, but I can work to lessen their pain by sharing in it and taking some of the weight. I can remember.