Jesse Eisenberg has received Polish citizenship for his portrayal of Polish Jews in the Holocaust in his Oscar-winning film A Real Pain, which he wrote, directed, and starred in.
A Real Pain tells the story of two American cousins, David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), who travel to Poland in order to honor their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor.
The film was inspired by the story of Eisenberg’s great aunt, who grew up in Poland but fled to the US in order to escape the Holocaust. Kieran Culkin, who starred alongside Eisenberg, was awarded an Oscar for his performance in the film.
Eisenberg, a Jewish actor best known for his portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in another Oscar-winning film, The Social Network, grew up in the US, although his family originally came from Poland and Ukraine.
Eisenberg took a trip to Poland in 2008 with his wife to visit surviving relatives and sites that commemorate the history of Polish Jews, but he did not get the idea for the story he tells in his latest film until a few years ago.
He told the citizenship ceremony, "While we were filming this movie in Poland, and I was walking the streets and starting to get a little more comfortable in the country, something so obvious occurred to me, which is that my family had lived in this place for far longer than we lived in New York.”
Eisenberg believed that obtaining citizenship would be an opportunity for him and his family to reconnect to their heritage.
Filming in Poland was a 'surprisingly positive experience'
President Andrzej Duda said, "I am delighted that people from across the ocean acknowledge their heritage, recognize that their ancestors hail from the Republic [of Poland], and seek to forge a connection with our country."
Eisenberg said that filming on location in Poland was a surprisingly positive experience. “It’s not just that I had a great experience with the crew; it’s that we were working in locations and on historical sites that are being maintained by non-Jews.”
“So, for example, the Majdanek concentration camp [site] is run by young, non-Jewish academics who are really brilliant people who could probably work anywhere they want, and yet they’ve chosen to spend their lives driving to a concentration camp every day to memorialize Jewish history that occurred there.”
In one town where his family lived, Eisenberg met someone who knew his family history and actually shared photographs of his family. “My experience in Poland was one of overwhelming gratitude to people who spend their lives honoring the history of my family and families like mine.”