Jewish Repertory Theatre certainly captures the zeitgeist with its season opener, “Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski,” on stage through Nov. 24. Inspired by the actions of one determined man whose warnings about the horrors of Nazi Germany fell on deaf ears, his story is a lesson that cannot be repeated enough. 

Karski, born in Lodz in 1914 and raised in a Catholic family, was recruited by the Polish underground after the Nazi occupation to help collect and share information about the atrocities being inflicted on Poland’s Jews and others. He saw the inhumanity of the Warsaw Ghetto and the horrifically mundane murders of the death camps. He also was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo before being aided in an escape so he could tell the world what was happening.

But for too long, the world didn’t care.

“Human beings have infinite capacity to ignore things that are not convenient,” Karski says at one point. “They chose to ignore, they don’t want to believe, so later they can say they didn’t know. THEY KNEW.”

Karski’s story is vividly brought to life by actor David Lundy in this mesmerizing one-man show. On a set holding only a table and two chairs, with a few minimal changes in clothing, Lundy recreates the strength and despair and courage of this self-described unremarkable man who risked his life to do what was right. 

Karski was not Jewish and wasn’t a target or a soldier, but for him, seeing what he saw, it would have been unthinkable not to act. Even when one feels helpless in the face of a world that is going crazy, he asks, “What can we do?” Then, “What can I do? How do we know what we are capable of?”

Ultimately, Karski realizes there are those who are capable of being monsters. He has witnessed people – his countrymen and women and children – being murdered, beaten, silenced and forgotten. Not for anything they have done. Just because of who they are. 

The import of his observations – spoken with matter-of-fact horror — vibrates through the space we are sharing. Alone in the light, he is referring to one thing; we find ourselves thinking of others. Truth can do that sometimes. 

Playwrights Clark Young and Derek Goldman amplify the effect by using Karski’s own words in the narrative. Lundy deftly populates the stage with a variety of characters from Karski’s childhood and forward. Among the most heartbreaking is the resistance member who, while showing Karski what was happening, admonishes him to “Remember this.” “Remember this.” “Remember this.”

The material here is inherently compelling, and Lundy’s immersive performance is bolstered by Chris Cavanagh’s effective lighting work and haunting sound design by Tom Maker. Their dynamic effects carry us along as Karski goes from Nazi rally to wretched ghetto to the White House (with Lundy doing an impressively authentic version of FDR). 

One lesson, which Karski would later impress upon his college students, echoes throughout: “Governments have no souls. Individuals have souls.” That divide is made abundantly clear as the young Karski desperately relays his messages, that the Jewish people are dying under the Nazis, they are being systematically killed, and that, unless the free world responds, they will be exterminated. 

History tells us what happened.

“Remember This” is a powerful story wrapped in a stunning performance. It also can be seen as a fervent warning, at least for those who do not prefer to ignore truths that happened to be inconvenient. As Karski reminds us, convenient or not, we know. 

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“Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski,” is presented by Jewish Repertory Theatre in the Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo, 2640 North Forest Drive, Amherst, through Nov. 24. Performances are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. There are talk-backs after the Thursday night shows. Tickets are $48; $40.80 for JCC members; $15 for students, at jccbuffalo.org.