Performative Engagements with Loss: Healing Rituals at the Borderland Foundation in Sejny and the Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre Centre in Lublin

This chapter looks at the commemorative activities of two local cultural and heritage organisations: the Borderland Foundation in Sejny in north-east Poland, near the border with Lithuania, and the Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre Centre in Lublin, south-east of Poland. I will introduce the two organisations and their activities of performative memorialisation of Polish-Jewish communities which centre on active participation on behalf of the local population. I will explain what defines the performative practice endorsed by these institutions, and what are its characteristics particularly as they are made apparent in several key memorial projects. A specific memorial culture focused on ‘repair’ and ‘ritual’ is created through local participations of young people which borrows from official forms of memorialisation governed from atop and specific local sensibilities, creating a messier version of Polish Holocaust memory defined by a greater awareness and tolerance of the other.