Art over Darkness Stories
Theatrical Revues in Nazi-era Ghettos
In the overcrowded Ghetto, a walled off seven blocks housing over 40,000 Jewish residents of Vilna (Vilnius), a stopover before death camps or mass grave pits, a group of writers and performers launched variety shows of poignant and satirical songs and skits. Despite posters decrying that "In a graveyard you do not do theatre" and plastered around the Vilna Ghetto in the early 1940s, concerts, performances and lectures became an important social occurrence among the starving population of the ghetto which was also mourning for its dead. In hundreds of standing room performances, 38,000 inmates could rise above their horrific circumstances and depraved conditions, immerse in hope, however fleeting. Survivors spoke of the theatre performances as a “miracle.” Nothing could keep audiences away, not even the presence of hostile soldiers in the audience, or the grim reality of omnipresent random murders, imminent death and starvation. Creativity and spirit were sustained and nourished, and some of the songs written then are still being sung and recorded today.
Music in Holocaust Death Camps
Edith Steiner Krauss, a pianist who played to survive the Terezin concentration camp (Theresienstadt), one of the last to perform there, before she died at 100 years of age, explained: “I don’t remember being sick, though I was told I was ill a lot; I don’t recall being hungry, though we all were. I just remember the music.”
Young actress, Sima Skurkovitz, who participated in the Maydim puppet shows in the Vilna (Vilnius) Ghetto, wrote: “the plays and songs are an expression of what was in our hearts, what we were experiencing - the killings, our pain... They gave us the hope to survive.” Rachel Kostanian-Danzig, Spiritual Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto (Vilnius, 2002).
The Defiant Requiem – Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín tells the story of the courageous Jewish prisoners in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp (Terezín) during World War II who performed Verdi’s Requiem while experiencing the depths of human degradation. With only a single smuggled score, they performed the celebrated oratorio sixteen times, including one performance before senior SS officials from Berlin and an International Red Cross delegation. Conductor Rafael Schächter told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.” Defiant Requiem is not just a performance of the Verdi Requiem, but a tribute to Schächter’s inspired leadership who was forced to reconstitute the choir three times as members were transported to Auschwitz. The performances came to symbolize resistance and defiance and demonstrated the prisoners’ courage to confront the worst of mankind with the best of mankind.
The Pianist (2002), starring Adrien Brody, tells the heart-wrenching story of acclaimed Polish Jewish musician, WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Szpilman, and his harrowing journey through the ‘Warsaw Ghetto’ during the Second World War. The film is inspired by the autobiography, The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945.
