Passover ........Never forget

Video: Passover Vienna 1947. The Viennese Jew helps celebrate Passover with the help of his American brothers. 

Saved from scraps, music of the camps Telegraph

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In pictures: Music from the camps Audio: Charles Abeles (Holocaust Music: Alberobello 1942)    Audio: Josef Kropinski (Holocaust Music: Auschwitz 1942)       Audio: Viktor Ullman (Holocaust Music: Theresienstadt 1943) Scribbled in notebooks, diaries and even on pieces of lavatory paper, they provide a remarkable history of the music played and sung by the victims of the Holocaust. Scores for thousands of waltzes, tangos, operas and folk songs will soon be made available to the public, thanks to the dedication of Francesco Lotoro, a professional pianist who for 16 years has been scouring Europe's capitals to amass his collection. Mr Lotoro, 42, stumbled across his first piece of Holocaust music on a trip to Prague in 1991. "I was interested and decided to bring some back with me," he said. "In the end, I had to buy a new suitcase because I found 300 works.

Much of the music is sad and plaintive. The lyrics of one song by Josef Kropinski read: "In Buchenwald, the birch trees rustle sadly, as my heart sways languishing in woe." Much of Mr Lotoro's collection comes from Theresienstadt in the Czech Republic, a concentration camp used by the Third Reich as a propaganda exercise to hide its extermination plans. Consequently, music was allowed, and orchestras and bands were permitted to perform. There was even a jazz band called the Ghetto Swingers. Nevertheless, 33,000 of the 140,000 Jews who were sent there died, and 90,000 were sent to other camps, where many also perished. One musician that Mr Lotoro discovered had been interned there was Rudolf Karel, a Czech composer arrested for taking part in the resistance in Prague. Despite suffering from dysentry, he used lavatory paper to compose a five-act opera and a nonet - a composition for nine instruments. The last of his works was an upbeat Prisoners' March, dated four days before his death in March 1945.

Andrew Bostom: "My Passover thoughts on a holiday which celebrates freedom, including Israel’s liberation from 13 centuries of jihad-imposed dhimmitude".

Passover & The Ingathering The Democracy Project

Comments

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There needs to be a word that is the exact opposite of schadenfreud.

A word that means while the heart is breaking, joy for the human spirit leaps out.

May G*d's blessings be on you and yours this Passover.

J