We didn't play pétanque in the Warsaw Ghetto

On ne jouait pas à la pétanque dans le ghetto de Varsovie Éric Feldman / Olivier Veillon Théâtre + 14 years old What if Freud had been Hitler’s therapist? Could absolute evil have been avoided? Starting from this question, as dizzying as it is absurd, Éric Feldman signs a truly singular one-man show. Supported by the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah and directed by Olivier Veillon, under the complicit gaze of Joël Pommerat, the show takes the form of an art-house stand-up, between an intimate lecture, family confidence, and autofiction. Éric Feldman explores there, with humor, emotion, and gravity, the consequences of the Shoah on the hidden survivor children (his parents, his uncles, his aunts) but also on the next generation, the one that inherits the silences, fears, and traumas. His humor, devastating and deeply human, evokes the spirit of the great New York comedians, while sometimes recalling the brilliant and existential neuroses of a Woody Allen. We cross paths with Hitler and Freud, absolute evil and psychoanalysis, Yiddish, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Uncle Lucien, Aunt Sarah, Milosh the cat, yoga, love, obsessions, and that strange energy that allows, despite everything, to continue living. Laughter never erases the violence of History. On the contrary, it allows us to approach it differently, to make shareable what seemed unspeakable. Through his family history, Éric Feldman also speaks of all the traumas caused by mass crimes, of what they leave in bodies, generations, and societies. He questions otherness, the relationship to the other, the stranger within oneself, and this fragile passage from shadow, isolation, and confinement to the shore of the living. Funny, moving, and deeply original, On ne jouait pas à la pétanque dans le ghetto de Varsovie transforms an intimate memory into a collective experience. A show to think, laugh, be moved, and celebrate, despite everything, the joy of being alive. As part of Festival Frontières. Nomination for the Molières 2026 – One-man show