{"id":273,"date":"2017-10-24T23:10:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T23:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/?p=273"},"modified":"2017-10-28T16:57:54","modified_gmt":"2017-10-28T16:57:54","slug":"music-as-resistance-in-a-nazi-concentration-camp-two-upcoming-events-in-charlotte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/blog\/2017\/10\/24\/music-as-resistance-in-a-nazi-concentration-camp-two-upcoming-events-in-charlotte\/","title":{"rendered":"Music as resistance in a Nazi concentration camp: Two upcoming events in Charlotte"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a Holocaust historian and educator, I am often asked, \u201cWhy did no one resist?\u201d Fortunately, there was considerable resistance<\/a>, from many quarters and in many forms. This becomes more visible when we break free from narrow definitions of \u201cresistance\u201d \u2014such as the notion that only armed struggle qualifies as resistance. On\u00a0November 16<\/a> and December 3<\/a>\u00a0UNC Charlotte\u2019s School of Music and the university\u2019s Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies<\/a> will host two events\u00a0that highlight a particularly striking and powerful form of defiance to Nazism: cultural resistance.<\/p>\n

The concert “Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terez\u00edn” will be performed on December 3 at UNCC’s Robinson Hall. The concert will be preceded by a screening of a documentary on the same theme on November 16 at the university’s Center City<\/a> location.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.”<\/p><\/div>\n

The Nazis used their infamous camp Theresienstadt<\/a> (aka Terez\u00edn), forty miles north of Prague, as a \u201cmodel\u201d camp that they claimed was humane, a ruse that some outsiders accepted. To buttress this charade, the Nazis transported large numbers of artists and musicians to the camp. Within strict limits\u2014limits that the prisoners challenged and expanded\u2014some artistic expression<\/a> was allowed, and for propaganda purposes even encouraged.<\/p>\n

In 1941 Rafael Sch\u00e4chter, already an accomplished young Czech conductor, was arrested and sent to Terez\u00edn. He managed to recruit 150 prisoners and teach them Verdi\u2019s Requiem<\/em> under near-impossible conditions: learning by rote in a dank cellar using a single score, and holding semi-clandestine rehearsals after long days of forced labor.<\/p>\n

They performed the piece sixteen occasions for fellow prisoners. A final, infamous performance occurred on June 23, 1944 before high-ranking SS officers from Berlin and officials of the International Red Cross.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Schachter collaborated with the famed pianist and composer Gideon Klein, among others. Klein would also perish during the Holocaust.<\/p><\/div>\n

The concert\/drama that will be performed on December 3, “Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terez\u00edn,” is a multi-media production two hours in length. \u201cDefiant Requiem\u201d was created by Maestro Murry Sidlin and has been performed around the world. From the production\u2019s website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The concert\/drama presents a\u00a0complete performance of Verdi’s\u00a0Requiem<\/em> combined with\u00a0elements of on-stage\u00a0drama, video interviews and authentic film from the era.<\/p>\n

The performance begins with cacophony of\u00a0sounds representing the vast variety of performances presented at Terez\u00edn during any week.\u00a0 At the sound of a piercing train whistle all music stops and the Requiem begins. \u00a0Film excerpts include moments from the propaganda film \u201cThe F\u00fchrer Gives the Jews a City.\u201d To achieve authenticity,\u00a0movements of the Requiem begin with an out of tune piano and evolve into the ideal of the orchestra.<\/p>\n

The real heart of this story is the life-affirming\u00a0harmonious effect brought about by great music which offered hope, courage, dignity and assurance to all who sang or heard it, through the expressions of faith, justice, love and compassion found in the mass.<\/p>\n

Murry Sidlin came upon this story by chance. Browsing through a book in a\u00a0bookstore in Minneapolis\u2014he was on the faculty at the University of Minnesota\u2019s School of Music\u2014Sidlin alighted upon a brief reference to the Requiem<\/em> performances in Theresienstadt. As he explained in a 2008 profile<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I thought to myself, \u201cMy God,\u201d and then all the implications of this started to strike me: Verdi\u2019s Requiem<\/em> in a concentration camp\u2014\u201cRecruited singers\u201d was all it said\u2014who were these singers? and this conductor? why the Verdi Requiem<\/em> in that place? Why did a choral conductor who was in prison for being Jewish recruit something like 150 singers to learn by rote a choral work that is steeped in the Catholic liturgy with a chorus that was 99 percent Jewish? That was the genesis of the project.<\/p>\n

Sidlin, whose paternal grandmother and her family where killed in a Latvian ghetto, contacted some Holocaust experts, but they could not provide much helpful information about Sch\u00e4chter and his co-conspirators. It was when he began to contact survivors, as the Defiant Requiem Foundation\u2019s site explains<\/a>, that the story began to unfold:<\/p>\n

One morning at 4.a.m., Sidlin bolted out of bed with a thought and combed the text of Verdi\u2019s masterpiece: \u201cWho shall I ask to intercede for me, when even the just ones are unsafe\u2026Give me a place among the sheep and separate me from the goats\u2026Nothing shall remain unavenged\u2026That day of calamity and misery, a great and bitter day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI could see that almost every line of the Mass could have a different meaning as a prisoner,\u201d detected Sidlin. \u2018Deliver me O Lord\u2019 for them meant liberation. Nothing remaining unavenged was certainty of punishment for their captors,\u201d he said. When Sidlin checked with the survivors they confirmed his insight into why they were so drawn to the work.<\/p>\n

A survivor named Marianka May, for example, told Sidlin that as he assembled and prepared the musicians, Sch\u00e4chter started using words like “defiant”:\u00a0“This is our way of fighting back\u2014we take the high ground\u2014we stand above\u2014we have a vision of high art\u2014the Verdi Requiem<\/em> is the pinnacle of defiance.”\u00a0And Sch\u00e4chter also said to them a number of times: ‘We can sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them’\u2014that was the essence, that was the message behind the Verdi.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Members of the Prague Symphony Orchestra, Prague Philharmonic Choir, and the K\u00fchn Choir of Prague take stage for June 2013 performance of the Defiant Requiem in Prague\u2019s St. Vitus Cathedral. Photo credit: Josef Rabara<\/p><\/div>\n

On November 16, two weeks before the concert performance, the School of Music and the Holocaust-studies center will show a documentary film, Defiant Requiem<\/em><\/a>, at UNCC\u2019s Center City location.<\/strong> The 80-minute film employs \u201ctestimony provided by surviving members of Sch\u00e4chter\u2019s choir, soaring concert footage, cinematic dramatizations, and evocative animation. This unique film explores the singers\u2019 view of the Verdi as a work of defiance and resistance against the Nazis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan Cernyak-Spatz survived Theresienstadt as well as Auschwitz, and at the age of 95, after having taught German for many years at UNC Charlotte, remains a visible and vibrant presence in the community.\u00a0 Dr. Cernyak-Spatz knew Gideon Klein and other artists in Theresienstadt, and she will speak at the November 16 event<\/a> in Uptown Charlotte, which is free. More than once in the last year, Susan has expressed to me her concern over the rise of nationalism and fascism, which \u201cremind me of things I saw in Berlin and Vienna\u201d in her youth.<\/p>\n

Maestro Murry Sidlin will conduct and preside over the December 3 concert at UNCC. Tickets are inexpensive ($8-10) and are available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sidlin has said, \u201cmy own objectives were simple: I am attempting to give Sch\u00e4chter the career he was prevented from having; and I want everyone who learns of the commitment to the \u2018high ground\u2019 taken by the\u00a0conductor and chorus to associate them always with the Verdi score. Then, there are the most important issues: the value of life and living, the depth they all achieved in understanding the music\u2014returning to Verdi’s core, and the psychological, emotional, and physical effects of the music, and the hope it brought them. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Information about the November 16 film-showing<\/a><\/h5>\n
Information about the December 3 concert <\/a><\/h5>\n

This article was also published on the blog site of WDAV<\/a>, Davidson’s classic music radio station.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a Holocaust historian and educator, I am often asked, \u201cWhy did no one resist?\u201d Fortunately, there was considerable resistance, from many quarters and in many forms. This becomes more visible when we break free from narrow definitions of \u201cresistance\u201d \u2014such as the notion that only armed struggle qualifies as resistance. On\u00a0November 16 and December […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updates"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3jdw9-4p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}