NOBODY TOLD ME

Historical Verisimilitude

Nobody Told Me is inspired by true events from the Warsaw Ghetto, but it is not a strict historical re-enactment. The story blends factual moments with personal, philosophical, and emotional interpretations drawn from mid-20th-century Polish and European history.
Deportations
Dr Halina Rotstein, the playwright’s grandmother, was forced from her home in Kutno and worked as a doctor at the Czyste Jewish Hospital before and after the formation of the Ghetto. She continued treating patients under extreme conditions until her deportation to Treblinka on 12 September 1942, where she was murdered. Her children were smuggled out of the Ghetto by fellow doctors and hidden in the Anusia Orphanage. In the play, only Wanda, the author’s mother, appears.

Halina’s first husband, Dr Stanisław Szenicer, escaped the Ghetto but ultimately died during the war. Catholic doctors Andrzej Trojanowski and Natalia Radlińska, members of Żegota, the council for aid of Jews, helped smuggle the children to safety and were later named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

The character Maria draws inspiration from Maria Steckiewicz, an NKVD escapee and member of the Warsaw Underground, who helped hide Jewish children and ran the Anusia Orphanage in Konstancin. She was briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo during the war.

The play references various forms of collaboration under Nazi rule, including the Jewish Police during the 1942 deportations, the Polish Blue Police, and blackmailers who preyed on Jews hiding on the Aryan side.

It also portrays abandoned children on the Umschlagplatz and the daily terror faced by families separated by the Ghetto walls.

Medical staff in the Ghetto created functioning hospitals and first aid stations despite starvation and overcrowding. Jewish resistance groups ŻOB and ŻZW organised the 1943 Ghetto Uprising.

On the Aryan side, Żegota supported Jews with false papers, shelter, food, and medical procedures to help them survive.

The Church’s role was complex: pre-war antisemitism contrasted with wartime acts of refuge in some monasteries and homes.

Though the number of telephones decreased drastically by 1942, those remaining in institutions, like the Judenrat and Czyste Hospital, became essential for organising smuggling, coordinating escapes, and enabling families divided by the Ghetto wall to stay in contact. The Jewish underground received warnings through phone calls, and fighters used the system during the Uprising to communicate with the Aryan side.