{"id":1213,"date":"2016-04-19T19:32:57","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T17:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=1213"},"modified":"2016-04-19T19:32:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T17:32:57","slug":"fifty-five-dress-rehearsals-for-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=1213","title":{"rendered":"Fifty-five Dress Rehearsals for Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am proud to announce that my website has just been awarded the Polish Music Critics 'Kropka’ Award – given for the text published almost a year ago, just after the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Today marks the 73. anniversary of this event, one of the most remarkable acts of resistance in World War II. Hereby I repost my essay in English, to perpetuate the memory of all children perished in the Holocaust. <\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In November 1941, Heinrich Himmler issued a command to close the Austrian fortress in Terez\u00edn \u2013 which two years previously had found itself within the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, occupied by the Third Reich \u2013 and transform it into a Jewish ghetto, with the transition camp already active since 1940 integrated into the defensive wall system. Nazi propaganda presented Theresienstadt as a model ghetto, the pattern for a modern Jewish settlement \u2013 indeed, a \u2018family camp\u2019 (Familienlager). Rumors spreading to the effect that the city was serving as a gigantic concentration camp were denied in every possible way. When a transport of about 500 Jews from Denmark arrived in Terez\u00edn and activists from the Danish Red Cross categorically demanded an inspection, the Germans agreed to it and proceeded to quickly \u2018clean up\u2019 the ghetto. They painted some of the rooms, sealed others off from the guests, arranged a few extra transports to Auschwitz in order to \u2013 at least for the moment \u2013 limit overpopulation; after that, they took up closer supervision of the inhabitants\u2019 cultural activity. There was no need to encourage anyone to take part in the latter \u2013 at that time, the ghetto\u2019s residents included the elite of Jewish political, cultural and academic life.<\/p>\n

The Danes left Terez\u00edn completely satisfied, having discerned no improprieties in the camp\u2019s management. The Germans continued the momentum: they instructed one of the prisoners, Kurt Gerron, who ran the Karussell cabaret there, to make a propaganda film about the life of the local Jewish community. They assured Gerron that not a hair would fall from his head. The filming lasted eleven days and ended in mid-September 1944. The promise was not kept: both the director and most of the endeavor\u2019s participants captured on film were taken away to Auschwitz and gassed. The first showing of the edited material, intended for high-ranking state officials and SS\u00a0members, took place in April of the next year. In succeeding weeks, the film reached the hands of representatives of several international humanitarian organizations. On 3\u00a0May, the camp found itself under the control of the Red Cross; five days later, the Red Army entered the fortress. The propaganda \u2018document\u2019 was almost completely destroyed. About 20\u00a0minutes of the film survived \u2013 among others, shots from a performance of Pavel Haas\u2019 Studie<\/em> for string instruments under the baton of Karel An\u010derl; fragments from a performance of the Ghetto Swingers jazz band; and the final scenes from Hans Kr\u00e1sa\u2019s children\u2019s opera Brundib\u00e1r<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Kr\u00e1sa was the son of a Czech lawyer and a German Jewish woman. A violinist, pianist and composer educated in Prague and Berlin (a student of, among others, Zemlinsky and Roussell), he composed this little 40-minute work in 1938, in collaboration with librettist Adolf Hoffmeister, for a competition of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Education. The results were never announced: the German army entered Prague a few months before the competition\u2019s expected adjudication. In 1941, Kr\u00e1sa placed the notated materials in the hands of the Jewish war orphans\u2019 home on Belgick\u00e1 street in the Vinohrady district of Prague, where in the winter of 1942, the premi\u00e8re of Brundib\u00e1r <\/em>took place under the baton of Rudolph Freudenfeld, with simple scenery and costumes designed by Franti\u0161ek Zelenka, and with Gideon Klein at the piano, along with a violinist and percussionist whose names I have not managed to find. The composer did not take part in this event: arrested on 10\u00a0August 1942, he ended up in Theresienstadt, where he became the \u2018music man\u2019 as part of the camp\u2019s Freizeitgestaltung<\/em>, the organization of his co-prisoners\u2019 free time. Soon thereafter, nearly all of the creators and performers of the Prague show joined him there. Freudenfeld managed to smuggle in a piano reduction in his baggage, on the basis of which Kr\u00e1sa re-orchestrated the opera, adapting it to the resources of the local instrumental ensemble.<\/p>\n

\"Krasa6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hans Kr\u00e1sa listens to a concert conducted by An\u010derl; Theresienstadt, 1943.<\/p>\n

The story of Aninka and Pep\u00ed\u010dek \u2013 a pair of siblings orphaned by their father who have to get fresh milk for their sick mother, but have no money, so they follow in the footsteps of the street organ-grinder Brundib\u00e1r (a big, fat Bumblebee) and try to earn money for their purchases by singing \u2013 is basically a quite simple and in principle universal tale of the victory of good over evil. Inspired by Hansel and Gretel<\/em> and The Town Musicians of Bremen<\/em> of the Brothers Grimm, compared in a somewhat exaggerated manner by later interpreters with Aristophanes\u2019 pacifist Lysistrata<\/em>, it took on entirely new meanings in Theresienstadt and grew to the stature of a symbol of the vicissitudes of Jewish life. The mustachioed organ-grinder, who at first chases away the competitors, then tries to rob them, became a figure of the hated Hitler. The brave sparrow, the clever cat, the wise dog and the band of city children \u2013 these served as a metaphor for a close-knit community that effectively faces violence and restores the old world order. The realizers introduced characteristic corrections into the libretto: the condition for joining the group of intrepid defenders of good became courage and love of justice \u2013 in the place of the original love of homeland and obedience to parents. Brundib\u00e1r<\/em> was played in Terez\u00edn fifty-five times. Real fights broke out over tickets to the shows. The child performers of the lead roles enjoyed great respect among their peers.<\/p>\n

The young viewers sought to forget themselves in the theater, grabbed the simple, tuneful melodies from out in the audience, fed themselves with the delusive hope that in this resounding allegory, there lay at least some small grain of truth. Meanwhile, new faces were continually appearing in the 40-person choir, because previous performers had fallen victim to illness, chronic malnutrition, departed from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz and to Trostinets (near Minsk) in transports from which there was no return. They cheered their heroes: the peerless Honza Treichlinger in the title role, Pinta M\u00fchlstein and Greta Hofmeister in the roles of Pep\u00ed\u010dek and Aninka. However ghastly this may sound, they waited their turn, knowing that at any moment, they might join the ranks of the decimated choir or join the elite group of soloists in Brundib\u00e1r<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"cast\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After a showing of Brundib\u00e1r<\/em>. In the middle, Honza Treichlinger, creator of the title role; at his left hand, Ela Stein-Weissberger (the Cat)<\/p>\n

Some managed to escape from this hell. Ela Stein-Weissberger, performer of the role of the Cat in all (or nearly all, as some witnesses claim) of the shows in Terez\u00edn, lived to see the camp liberated; she emigrated to Israel, then to New York, where she lives to this day and actively takes part in post-war attempts to revive Brundib\u00e1r<\/em> and sustain the memory of her fellow child performers in the opera. Little Rafi Herz-Sommer, creator of the role of the Sparrow, was barely eight years old at the moment when the Theresienstadt camp was liberated. His father, \u2019cellist Leopold Sommer, had died a year previously at Dachau. In 1945, the orphaned boy returned to Prague with his mother, pianist Alice Herz-Sommer, with whom he emigrated to Jerusalem four years later. He finally settled in England and gained renown as Rapha\u00ebl Sommer, a \u2019cello virtuoso, distinguished pedagogue and organizer of musical life. He died in 2001 \u2013 his mother survived him by thirteen years and died a few months after her 110th<\/sup>\u00a0birthday, as the oldest Holocaust survivor in the world.<\/p>\n

Honza Treichlinger was not so lucky. He died at Auschwitz along with most of the children\u2019s choir members, the show\u2019s stage director Emil Saudek and the aforementioned Kurt Gerron. Hans Kr\u00e1sa left Theresienstadt in the same transport as three other composer friends: Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas and Gideon Klein, the latter of whom had accompanied the performers of the world premi\u00e8re in the Vinohrady district of Prague. All except for Klein were gassed in the second half of October 1944. Klein died in January of the next year, not having lived to see the end of the war.<\/p>\n

Someone will say that the memory of them all lives on in the score of Brundib\u00e1r<\/em>. Their death was, however, terrible, futile and senseless. The only comfort is the hope that participation in the Terez\u00edn shows anesthetized them to that death, alleviated the premonition of their end. Velimir Khlebnikov wrote about suns that die by fading away; grass that dies by drying out; horses that die by quietly drawing their last breath; and people that die by singing songs. The children at Theresienstadt died singing a song about friendship that overthrows tyrants.<\/p>\n

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski.<\/p>\n