Patrick Bade
The Composers of Terezín

Patrick Bade | The Composers of Terezín | 05.30.21

- [Judy] Right, Patrick, we’ve gone past, well, it’s three minutes past the half hour. So, welcome and welcome to everybody that’s joined us this afternoon, and Patrick, over to you.

Visuals are displayed throughout the lecture.

• Thank you, Judy. So, welcome, everybody. And what we see on the screen at the moment is an aerial view of the fortress of Terezín, or Theresienstadt. And it was created in the late 18th century in the reign of the Emperor Joseph II, who, ironically, was a very idealistic man. He was very influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. And the original intention of this fortress was to protect the borders of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In fact, I don’t think it ever saw a military conflict. It was used to imprison Gavrilo Princip, the assassin who triggered the first World War with the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand. And it was in the latter part of the Second World War, from 1942 to early 1945, that it was transformed by the Nazis into a concentration camp.

Now, it was not a death camp like Auschwitz or Treblinka or any of the other terrible death camps. People died in it, thousands of people died in it. But of the 150,000 people who passed through this camp, most were taken somewhere else to be murdered. The setting up of this camp was part of a very elaborate deception by the Nazis to try and convince the world that nothing terrible was happening to the Jews. And they wanted to present Theresienstadt to the world as more Butlin’s than Auschwitz. We see a map of it here with the small fortress, which you see on the left-hand side, on the other side of the river, was already in use to imprison political prisoners before 1942. But the larger part of the camp, which you see on the right, was in use from 1942.

These are stills from the notorious film, “Der Fuehrer schnekt den Juden eine Stadt” which, “The Fuhrer gives the Jews a town.” I mean, the amazing thing is that this deception seemed to work. There were three visits from the Red Cross, 1943, ‘44, and '45, and amazingly or incredibly, they did not seem to see that anything was amiss. But anyway, if one thing has taught us the last couple of years, events in the world have taught us that people believe what they want to believe in the face of facts, and that seems to have been the case. So, this is a still from that film showing apparently well-fed, well-dressed, and happy people in the camp. Happy children. They’re wearing their yellow stars, as you can see, but otherwise they look like normal, happy children. Football matches. And so what I’m talking about is the cultural life of the camp, particularly the musical life. And so Theresienstadt became, really, one of the cultural hotspots of the world for a period of just over two years.

So, my story tonight, I don’t want to dwell on the horror and the brutality of Nazi intentions. I think we’ve all got enough fear and enough horror and enough worry in our life. I don’t want to stoke up any more. So, I want to really tell this story as a story of the triumph of the human spirit over the most terrible circumstances. And if anybody really could represent the triumph of the human spirit, it has to be Alice Sommer-Herz, who you see here, who gave over 100 concerts in the camp. Sadly, I never met her, I could so easily have done. I mean, she died at the age of 110, quite recently. I knew many people who knew her. Of course, her greatest friend was Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who described her as terminally optimistic. She was one of those glass-half-full people who always wanted to see the positive side. And that’s a wonderful, wonderful quality to have. I wish I had more of it myself.

So, these are programmes for some of the concerts that were constantly put in. On the right, I mean, there’s really quite a challenging concert, really, Matt Reger, Zemlinksy, Schonberg, Alois Haba, and Mahler, So, you know, they’re obviously expecting a high level of comprehension from the audience. This is a still, again, taken from the film. You can see the composer, Hans Krása, taking a bow, the conductor, Karel Ančerl, wearing his yellow star at the end of the concert. And all tastes were catered to. So, there there was a jazz band. So bizarre, really, when you think of the Nazi attitude towards jazz. The Ghetto Swingers.

And they were led by this man, Martin Roman, who was a very distinguished jazz musician, pianist, had been with a very popular Marek Weber Band up till 1933. Like many people, he’d fled to Holland, where he was picked up by the Nazis. And amazingly, surprisingly, actually, after being transported to Auschwitz, he survived the war. There was also cabaret, and I’m going to be talking about great cabaret, Berlin cabaret composers on Wednesday. And cabaret very much, well, originally, of course, a Parisian invention, but very much a Berlin Jewish speciality.

And the cabaret, it was called a Karussell Cabaret in Theresienstadt, and they had the very distinguished star, Kurt Gerron, who you see with a fellow cabaret star, Curt Bois, on the right-hand side. Kurt Gerron, there’s two very, very good documentaries about him. There was one that won an Oscar, I think it must be about 10 or 12 years ago now, and I really recommend that to you. And it’s a very extraordinary story. I have the most enormous sympathy for him. He’s somebody who has attracted a lot of criticism, even hatred, actually, because he agreed to make this notorious film for the Nazis.

But as Anita, I’ve heard her say so often, “You don’t judge people in hell,” and I really don’t judge him for this. I think this was, on many levels for him, just a means of survival. He needed something to do, making a film was what he did. I don’t think that he can be blamed for the intentions of the Nazis in making this movie. He was multi, multi-talented. He was really a superstar in Berlin in the Weimar period, as an actor, as a cabaret perform, and as a film director.

And so after being forced out of Berlin, I mean, it’s a really, really tragic story, I mean, he was one of those people. he was so Berlin, he was the spirit of Berlin. He couldn’t possibly believe that they would hate him or throw him out. And it was only when Nazi thugs actually came to the film studio and sort of beat him up on set that he left and he went to Holland. And he had a big reputation. And Curt Bois, who you see here, moved to Hollywood.

A lot of these people, I’ve talked about this before, playing little roles, sort of cameo roles, films like “Casablanca” and “Maltese Falcon,” full of little roles for these stars of the Weimar Cinema. And Curt Bois arranged a Hollywood contract for Kurt Gerron. And, but no, he was the star. He was the big star. And he did not want to arrive in Hollywood in anything less than glory. And he insisted on first class tickets on the liner for himself and his family, and the studio baulked at that. And that’s why he didn’t escape to Hollywood.

And so when the Germans arrived, he was picked up by then and sent to Theresienstadt. And so I want to give you a flavour. He’s got this wonderful, very characterful, gravelly voice. He was in the first performances of “The Threepenny Opera” of Kurt Weill, although not singing the song that you are going to hear him sing here. I’m sure he must have sung this on many occasions in Theresienstadt.

♪ Music plays ♪

So, he wanted desperately to live, and who doesn’t, and who can be blamed for that? And he thought that making this film would enable him and his family to be spared. And they were actually… It was this desperate, desperate rush in October 1944 to murder as many people as they possibly could with the approaching Russians. And he had to be beaten and kicked onto the train. And he died in Auschwitz on the 28th of October. He was one of the very, very last people to die in a gas chamber in Auschwitz, because next day, the orders came from Himmler to actually close down the gas chambers.

This is Hans Krása. And to my mind, he’s possibly… Oh, this is all very subjective, I’m always happy for you to disagree with me. But to me, he’s the most interesting of all these wonderful composers. Well, I think all of them would’ve made a very important contribution to classical music, if they had survived. In fact, the whole history of classical music in the second half of the 20th century, might have been different if they had survived. He came from a very wealthy, assimilated family. He was given an Amati violin for his 10th birthday present. So, he established himself as a notable figure already in the 1920s. And in 1933, he had a tremendous success with his opera, “Verlobung im Traum,” the “Betrothal in a Dream,” which is a setting of a story by Dostoevsky.

Now, timing is everything, I suppose, in life. And this was really a tragic timing. Because for any Czech opera composer from the 19th century onwards, the route to the world had to be through the German opera houses. This was the case with Smetana and “The Bartered Bride.” It was the case with Dvořák and “Rusalka.” It was the case with Janáček and all his operas, particularly “Jenůfa.” And the final example was 1928 with Weinberger’s “Schwanda the Bagpiper,” which was taken up in German opera houses, then it was taken up elsewhere, it went to the Met, and so on.

But, so 1933, 'cause the year that “Verlobung im Traum” was premiered with great, great success in Prague, the curtain had come down. There was no way for that opera to get out to the world through the German opera houses. And again, I recommend it very, very strongly to you. There’s a good recording, that wonderful series that was engineered by Michael Haas, Entartete Musik for Decca, absolutely brilliant, brilliant initiative. So many fine recordings were made. And there’s an excellent, complete recording of the “Verlobung im Traum” in that series.

In 1938, again, you think, “God, the timing,” '38, the year of the Munich Agreement and so on. There was a competition in Czechoslovakia for a children’s opera. And Krása, his entry was this piece called “Brundibár.” And because of the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in early 1939, and when they moved in, took the whole of it, the competition was annulled and the opera was not performed. So, eventually, '42, Krása is taken to Theresienstadt. And after this, the director of the Jewish orphanage in Prague, a man called Rudolph Freudenfeld, he… Well, it’s somewhat debatable whether you describe it as the premiere, the first performance. It was a run through with just three instruments of the piece in the orphanage in Prague.

Then he, himself, is arrested and sent to Theresienstadt, and he brings the score with him. So, he finds Krása there and he brings the score to Krása. So, the proper premiere, really, is within the camp. And it was performed no less than 55 times with a children’s soloist, children’s chorus. And scenes of one of the performances were filmed during the Red Cross visit and were part of Kurt Gerron’s documentary movie. I mean, the terrible thing about this is amongst the people who passed through Theresienstadt, the survival rate was particularly low with children. Very, very few children survived Theresienstadt. So, all these performances, the children would be trained to sing it. Then, soon afterwards, they’d be shipped off to the death camps and a new lot of children would have to be trained to sing it. So, that’s a still from the performance that was given in front of the Red Cross. And here is an excerpt of the opening of “Brundibár.”

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It’s the most attractive and lyrical score. So, here, again, is Hans Krása. And my next piece is actually written before the war. This is written in 1935, and it’s just called “Kammermusik,” “Chamber Music.” And it’s for a very, very unusual combination of harpsichord, saxophone, and six other instruments. So, I want to play this to you partly to give you a flavour of, obviously, the children’s opera is a rather special thing. It’s not really typical of Krása. This is rather more typical of his work. But I also wanted to play to you the great harpsichordist, Zuzana Růžičková, who you see on the left-hand side. She was actually in the children’s chorus for one of the performances of “Brundibár.”

And she was one of the very, very few children who survived to the end of the war. She had already been training as a pianist, but her hands had been damaged and she was told that she wouldn’t make the grade as a concert pianist after the war. So, she turned to the harpsichord and actually had a very, very important career. She was the first harpsichordist to record the complete keyboard works of Bach for the harpsichord. And she was my introduction to this music. I knew nothing about her, her background, her story. 'Cause again, when I was a teenager and I happened to buy a cut-price, (indistinct) CD in Smith’s in High Street Godalming of the Bach harpsichord concertos with her playing, and I completely fell in love with them, immediately. I was so excited by this that I did the longest bicycle ride of my life down to, where was it? Haslemere, I think, to visit the studios of the Dolmetsch family who manufactured harpsichords and spinets and so on. But, so here is a bit of this piece by Krása called “Chamber Music” with Zuzana Růžičková playing the harpsichord.

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And I’m now going to play you a piece, it’s a piece for string trio that Krása wrote in the camp. There’s no evidence that it was actually ever performed. Things that were written in the camp were usually written for specific musicians. I mean, there was speculation about the three string players that he wrote this for, but the likelihood is that they were transported to Auschwitz before they could actually perform it. So, it seems that it was not performed at the time. It’s called “Tanec,” which is Czech for “Dance.” And it’s such a vibrant piece. It’s such a sort of life-affirming, joyous piece. I think an absolutely amazing piece to have been written under these circumstances.

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Now we come to Viktor Ullmann. Like Krása, he was born in 1898. He was a pupil of Schonberg. And later, he was the assistant to Zemlinsky, assistant conductor to Zemlinsky in Prague. And already, like Krása, beginning to make a name for himself. Works had been performed outside of the Czech Republic and people were taking note of him. Again, it’s a very, very extraordinary story. And I’m surprised, in a way, that nobody’s made a movie out of it. It’s certainly rife material for it. He was married three times and he had four children. And when he was sent to Theresienstadt, he arrived with his third wife and his youngest child, who was still a baby, and his oldest child, Max.

This is a photograph you can see of the oldest child, Max, and the two middle ones, Felicia and Johannes. Now it’s like macabre thing, it’s that he arrives with wife number three and discovers that wives number one and two are already there waiting for him. It’s kind of, you know, Bluebeard in reverse. The most tragic aspect of this story is the two little children, who were just toddlers and they were sent on one of the last Kindertransports to England. But because they didn’t speak a word of English, they didn’t know what was going on, they were incredibly distressed. And they were so distressed that the people receiving them thought that they were mentally disturbed.

And, you know, at age whatever they were, two or something like, or three, they were put into an asylum. And they actually, although they survived the war, they never got out of the asylum. Now, Ullmann was a prolific composer, but ironically, most of the music that survives by him comes from this period in the camp. A lot of the music he wrote before the war is lost and assumed destroyed. And amazingly, all the music he wrote in the camp, it was pouring out of him, was preserved and is now reasonably frequently performed today. So, his 5th, 6th, and 7th piano sonatas were written in the camp. The 5th sonata, you can see, is dedicated to his beloved wife, Elizabeth, in memoriam. So, presumably she had been taken away and was already dead. And the 7th, the inscription is in French. (Speaks French)

And then very ironic, I mean, see how late this is, this is 22nd of August. So, he had less than two months to live, 1944. And at the bottom it says in German, “The performing rights are reserved for the composer during his lifetime,” that he knew, of course, that wasn’t going to be very long. So I’m going to play you an excerpt from a movement from the 7th piano sonata, which is a set of variations on a Hebrew folk theme.

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There, enlarged is the inscription reserving performing rights for his lifetime. Now, the work that he’s best known for today is his opera “Der Kaiser von Atlantis.” And it reached a dress rehearsal, but the premiere never took place in Theresienstadt. This was right at the end and everybody was rounded up and sent off to Auschwitz. So, it wasn’t actually premiered until the 1970s, and it caused a tremendous sensation at the time, and it was broadcast on television. And I remember it, I saw it broadcast on television when I was a teenager and it made a huge, huge impact on me. And I think it was probably one of the first times that I became really fully aware of what the Holocaust was about when I heard this piece.

It’s a very, very poignant, very ironic piece about this mad emperor who clearly, clearly represents Hitler, who’s spreading death around the world. And eventually, the figure of death goes on strike because he’s just having to kill too many people and he refuses to resume… There’s no death in the world and he refuses to resume his job of bringing death to the world until the emperor himself submits himself for death. And I’m going to play you a piece from towards the end of the opera, which I find very, very poignant and very beautiful. And it’s with new words, it’s a setting of the Bach hymn… What is it, “unser Gott ist”? No, what is it? Oh, dear. I wish my friend Michael, I could speak to him, the words that the title has got. It’s a very, very famous Martin Luther hymn. It was also set by Bach.

And what’s interesting, it was set by several Jewish composers. It’s used by Mendelssohn in the “Reformation” symphony. “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,” that’s it. “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,” “Our God is a mighty fortress.” So it’s used by Mendelssohn in the “Reformation” symphony. It’s used by Meyerbeer in the final act of “Les Huguenots.” It’s used very ironically and very naughtily by Offenbach. It’s a kind of alternative national anthem for the Protestant parts of Germany. And I think for those Jews who really felt German, it was a very important piece and a piece close to their heart. So, it was by no accident that Ullmann chooses this melody for this chorus.

♪ Music plays ♪

This is Pavel Haas, just one year younger, as you can see. It’s another very, very poignant story. He was from Brno, and he was a pupil of Janáček. He was the most distinguished, the most gifted pupil of Janáček. And he’s the only really nachfolger, follower, considerable follower, of Janáček. Janáček’s such a quirky composer. He’s kind of a one-off. But if he had a real follower, it was Pavel Haas. He came from a kind of solid, middle class background, and he was a Czech speaker. The composers I’ve been talking about up to now are all actually primarily German speakers. This is quite important.

I remember giving a talk about these Czech Jewish composers once at the old London Jewish Cultural Centre and it was a very distinguished, delightful gentleman. And I remember him very well 'cause he introduced himself at the end of the lecture, and his name was Ančerl. He was a cousin of Karel Ančerl, who I’ve already mentioned. And he came from a grand and Jewish bourgeois family. And, you know, I’d been talking about the composers who set German texts and the composers who set Czech texts. And he came up to me, he said very, very quietly, he was kind of embarrassed to say it to me, he said, “You know, because you must understand that in those days, we only spoke Czech with the servants.”

The educated, the upper bourgeoisie, were completely Germanized and completely German-speaking. So, he comes from, you know, socially, I suppose, a layer lower down than Krása. And his family owned a shoe shop. He has left quite an, you know, important body of work when you consider that, you know, he died in his mid-forties. There are three very, very impressive string quartets. And they have actually really become… Oh, here, there is Karel Ančerl, the conductor. There’s a very poignant story there.

They were on the same transport to Auschwitz and they arrived in Auschwitz together. And there were these terrible selections. You know, you go to the left or you go to the right. Go to the right, and you go to the gas chamber. You go to the left and you have maybe a chance a little bit longer. And Karel Ančerl was initially chosen to go to the gas chamber, but he was standing next to Pavel Haas and Pavel Haas had a coughing fit. He coughed, and that sealed his fate and he was pushed to the gas chambers. And Karel Ančerl survived.

I mean, what that does to you, I can’t really imagine, really, how you live with that for the rest of your life. But, so I wanted to play you a movement from one of the string quartets, I think it’s the first string quartet. So, this is before he arrives Theresienstadt. He did not write very much when he got there, and I’ll explain that in a minute. And I think this is just such a fantastic piece, so individual, it’s so quirky. And it describes a country, horse-drawn cart slowly moving, getting into motion.

♪ Music plays ♪

Oh! No it doesn’t. What’s that? Going to see if I’ve gone past it. No.

That is a song that he actually wrote, I got here. What’s this? Yeah.

♪ Music plays ♪

I’m going to go back to this for a minute. It’s, again, a very poignant story that he had a wife and a young daughter, as you can see. And he divorced his wife, really, in order to save the lives of his wife and daughter. And this was a very terrible, hard thing to have to do. And in the camp, he went into a very profound depression and did not write very much music. But this, I’m going to play you a song which is a setting of Chinese poetry translated into Czech.

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This is the youngest of the composers, born in 1919. So, he was only in his mid-twenties when he was murdered. In fact, in early 1945. This is Gideon Klein, as you can see, an extremely handsome young man. And everybody was impressed by him, thought he was incredibly gifted, We’ve only, of course, a tiny handful of works by him. I’m going to play you part of a piece for strings, originally, I think, written for a quartet, but in this version, played on a string orchestra. Very accomplished, in a neoclassical style, influenced to a certain extent by Stravinsky. You know, the tragedy is, of course, he was so young. He hadn’t really had a chance to develop his individuality as a composer.

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This is Rafael Schächter, who was a conductor. And the way he passed his time, the way he survived in Theresienstadt, was to put on performances of the Verdi “Requiem.” Altogether, he put on 15 performances of the Verdi “Requiem.” 'Cause it’s an enormous piece, a very elaborate piece, a very difficult piece, you know, for the four soloists and for the chorus. So, it was a huge achievement to put on a performance of Verdi “Requiem” in the circumstances of the camp. The macabre thing about this is, of course, he’d rehearse it, bring it to point where it could be performed, and they’d perform it, and then everybody would be taken off to the death camp and he would start again with a new chorus, a new soloist. It’s almost unimaginable. But, I think it’s a little bit like, of course, Kurt Gerron making his movie. It was something for him to focus on, something for him to do.

So, I wanted to finish my talk tonight with the “Libera me” from the last part of the Verdi “Requiem,” the very notoriously difficult piece for the soprano to sing, very moving piece that it must have had the “Libera me,” “Free me,” this must have had such a sort of intense, personal meaning for the people performing this piece and listening to it. And I want to play this to you. It is one of the most difficult pieces in the soprano repertoire 'cause the soprano has to climb very slowly to a high B-flat. And there’s no orchestra and there’s just chorus, and it’s very exposed.

I’ve heard so many sopranos crack where they’re attempting this. So, I’m going to play you, it’s a post-war performance. And the soprano is Hilde Zadek, who you see on the left-hand side as a young woman. Then, you see her as an 80-year-old with me. And that’s, what, 20 something years ago. And that was at the London Jewish Cultural Centre. It was a very important event for me. It was early in my association with the LJCC and it was such an amazing, emotional occasion, such a huge success. She talked to an audience and they asked questions and I think it really, for me, it cemented my relationship with the Centre.

And this is at the Salzburg Festival in 1947. And the performance was conducted by Herbert von Karajan, we know about him. And the soprano was supposed to be Renata Tebaldi, and she cancelled at the last minute and Hilde Zadek stepped in to take over. And I’ve just been talking with somebody who knows a lot about Hilde Zadek and her life. She died quite recently, aged 101. Amazing woman, God, I just loved being with her. And she had the audience at the LJCC completely in the palm of her hand. She was an incredible woman. And so, apparently, Karajan, unsurprisingly, really couldn’t stand her and treated her very badly. But you’ll hear how… I hardly know a better version of this. She really does sing like an angel and she gets up to that top B-flat and floats it perfectly.

♪ Music plays ♪

All right. That’s it. Oh, I should have given you the words. Here are the words of it, but, so, right. I will now see if we have any questions. There do seem to be some.

Q&A and Comments

This from Linda Sandler, “My father lived in Prague until 1935 when he left for South Africa. He lived with the family who ran the Jewish orphanage.” Oh, God, that’s so interesting. “And were all sent to Terezín.” Yes. The son, Rudolph Freudenfeld, remained in Terezín as a music teacher. Yes, That’s the story, of course, that I told you. He had a…

Whoops. Oh, where have they gone? Yes. Right.

“The book 'When Time Stopped’ by Ariana Neumann that I’ve just finished reading is the life of some of her father, parents sent to Terezín and then killed.” Let me see, let’s go down.

“North Americans won’t know what Butlin’s is.” It’s a holiday camp.

Q: “Did the Red Cross and any others who visit the camp really know?” A: I think they cannot have wanted to know. They must… I mean, and we know that the first visit was from the German Red Cross, so we can be fairly sure that they were pretty controlled by the Nazis and that they wouldn’t have wanted to know. But, yes, they must have had opportunities to question people. It’s a mystery. I just can’t understand how they could have whitewashed it.

Q: “What is the singer’s name?” A: If you’re talking about the singer at the end, that’s Hilde Zadek. Right.

This is… Oh, Michael Wright is saying that his grandfather died in Auschwitz going on the same train from Terezín on October 4, ‘44. “He knew however, that I’d been born 11 weeks before,” from my friend Michael. I mean, that train when you think, oh, it’s so incredible, so incredible. The people on that last train in October. And you know, they arrived 16th of October and all of them were dead by the 18th. Somehow, I feel, you know, those three days should almost be set apart as some kind of memorial.

“Comedian Harmonists,” I’m not quite sure where they come into that here at this point.

Somebody’s saying that Maurice Sendak designed a picture book based on “Brundibár.”

Myra Fournier saying that her great-grandmother made that journey to Auschwitz via Theresienstadt.

“There’s a very fine CD called 'Forbidden Music,’ which includes works by Krása, Gideon Klein, Schulhoff.” There are actually a lot of CDs of this music now. There’s one, they say, is on the Nimbus label.

“My late friend Yvan Ančerl told me that his father, Karel, was ordered to conduct concerts for the SS in the evenings. In the daytime, they would do experiments with him without any anesthetic to see if he was brilliant in music.” Yes. Karel Ančerl, very distinguished, very important conductor.

“The Black Oak Ensemble just released a CD, ‘Silenced Voices,’” this from Barbara Greist, “with powerful chamber music, including ‘Tanec’ by Krása, Gideon Klein, and others.” So, that’s a good one to go for.

I would love to come to Toronto and I would be amazed to meet survivors from Terezín. You know, it’s funny, I have a big, big reluctance to go to a concentration camp so that I just don’t think I could face going to Auschwitz. But I really would like to go to Theresienstadt. I think it’s different from the others. And as I said, the thing to cherish from Theresienstadt is the positive. It’s the amazing survival of the human spirit.

Yes, the story about the toddlers is terrible, really, isn’t it?

Somebody saying they had the great privilege of meeting Alice Herz-Sommer when she was 104. She mentioned that one of Ullmann’s piano sonatas was dedicated to her. Yes, that’s right. I’m told till two days before she died, she was still practising on her piano in her Belsize Park flat.

“‘Defiant Requiem’ is a wonderful docudrama about the power of music in Terezín.” That sounds very interesting. Yes.

Q: “Where did they get the scores?” A: That’s interesting, isn’t it? I think, you know, people treasured these scores and they must have been brought into the camp. People took their most treasured possessions and somebody must have brought a score of Verdi “Requiem.”

I have a score of the opera “Tiefland,” which, it’s a very moving document because, obviously, it belonged to somebody called Esther Blum, who was Hungarian. And she writes all sorts of details of performances in Budapest, and then she’s written notes in it in Swedish. So, it makes it clear that she was one of the people rescued by Wallenberg and obviously, this score was very precious to her, and she took it with her from Budapest to Sweden.

Somebody saying, “I wonder if the Nazi guard and administrators ever attended performance and might have been…” Ugh, I know. It’s just one of those great mysteries, isn’t it? There’s that story, I think it’s Fania Fénelon tells about Mengele, they’re playing Schumann to him, and he was sitting there with tears in his eyes at the beauty of the music.

Oh, again, the singer who’s sing… you should have a list. I make a list every week of everything and it will be on that list. But it’s Hilde Zadek, wonderful, wonderful singer and a very remarkable woman. And maybe I’d just like to tell you one story about her on that occasion, since we had five minutes, I will tell you this story.

It was absolutely packed out. People remembered her. So, there were well over 100 people, probably 150 people, in a big room at the London Jewish Cultural Centre. And as I said, she had the audience in the palm of her hand. It was a wonderful, feel-good occasion, everybody was, you know, over the moon with it. And there was a very odd moment at the end. A young man, who’s actually an Israeli singer, as I discovered later, stood up in the questions at the end and he said, “I’ve been very moved by your story. Don’t you see any parallel between how Jews like you were treated by the Nazis and how Palestinians are being treated in Israel today?”

So, it was a kind of shock moment in the audience. ‘Cause, I mean, whatever you think about it, it was just such an inappropriate thing to say in that moment. And it could have turned very, very ugly. I mean, it was just kind of such an intake of breath in the audience. And I’ll never forget Hilde Zadek, she just said, “I will only say one thing.” She said, “I long for the day when Jews and Arabs can live together as brothers.” And she got a standing ovation from the audience. It was really a kind of electrifying moment.

Somebody saying they saw a video at Yad Vashem of Karel Ančerl conducting in “Terezín.” That will have been from the film that I was talking about. It will’ve been from the Kurt Gerron movie. “Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín.” Yeah, I must follow that up, that sounds really interesting.

So, other people with personal memories or family. Someone said, “I once met violinist Paul Kling who survived Terezín.” The singer, as I said, you’ll find it on the list. It’s Hilde Zadek. So, anyway, I think I need to come to an end. Some other people remembering “Defiant Requiem.”

“Music paper was smuggled into Theresienstadt,” somebody is saying. Yeah, somebody said, “I think Rafael Schächter took as much music with him in his luggage and the choir had to learn runoff by heart.” That’s interesting.

And somebody’s saying that they’ve lived in Prague for years and couldn’t face going to Terezín, which I do understand.

Right. I think that’s it for today. We’ve got a more cheerful subject on Wednesday, I’m glad to tell you. Wonderful Berlin cabaret composers and their adventures in Paris in the 1930s. So it’ll be a very upbeat talk on Wednesday. Thank you all for listening.

• [Judy] Patrick?

• And see you on Wednesday!

• [Judy] Yes, thanks, Patrick. Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye!

• Thank you, Judy.

• [Judy] Bye-bye.

• Bye-