David Dalle
Thursday April 16th, 2015 with David Dalle
Songs by women in the Holocaust; Shostakovich's 13th symphony 'Babi Yar'; new Roma music from Taraf de Haidouks

Today is Canada's Holocaust Remembrance Day and it is also a few weeks away from the 70th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust and the end of the world's most horrific war in Europe. I will have a sombre show featuring a new recording of songs written by both Jewish and Gentile women in concentration camps. The four women featured are Ilse Weber, Ludmila Peskarova, Erika Taube, Camilla Mohaupt. They wrote patriotic songs, laments for home, and lullabies to comfort their children. These songs were chosen and sung by Shulamit and accompanied by pianist Shai Bachar and tumpeter Frank London with percussion from Yuval Lion. Ilse Weber (1903-1944) was a Jewish Czech writer and an amateur musician. In 1939, she managed to save her eight year old son, Hanus, sending him to friends in Sweden on the Kindertransport. Many of her poems speak of this unbearable separation. In 1942 she was deported to Theresienstadt with her husband and her younger son. There, she worked as a nurse in the children's infirmary and it was during those years that she wrote her poems, both in German and Czech, which she also sometimes set to music. In October 1944, she voluntarily chose to join her husband and son in the transfer to Auschwitz, where she died in the gas chambers together with her son and the other children she was accompanying from Theresienstadt. Before being transported to Auschwitz, her husband managed to bury some of her poems and scores under a hut. Miraculously, he was able to recover them following his survival. Ludmila Peskarova (1890-1987) worked as a music teacher. In 1921 she married Jan Peskar, a fellow teacher and a member of the Czech resistance movement. In 1942, he was arrested and murdered following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (one of the architects of the Holocaust). Ludmilla was arrested in May 1942 for high treason because she had put two small black banners into her window in commemoration of her husband. In Ravensbruck, she composed and secretly performed with her camp mates many patriotic songs. She wrote down some of her work in the summer of 1945 upon her return home. Erika Taube (1913-1944) was a poet and wife of the polish composer Carlo Taube. Only one of her songs she wrote in Theresienstadt survived, the poignant Ein Judisches Kind. Erika, her husband and son were all deported to Auschwitz where they died in 1944. Camilla Mohaupt. The identity of this song writer is somewhat uncertain. Different sources report different names. Nevertheless, it seems that she was deported initially to Auschwitz and subsequently to Bergen Belsen. There she wrote the Auschwitz Lied, the only song on the album describing the physical realities of the camp experience. We also hear Shostakovich's 13th symphony from 1962, subtitled "Babi Yar". Shostakovich had always been deeply upset by the Holocaust and the anti-semitism which persisted in Soviet society, particularly under Stalin. During Nikita Kruschev's cultural thaw allowing greater freedom of expression, the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko was very active and popular with the people, composing poetry which was critical of many aspect of Soviet life. His poem "Babi Yar" was composed to confront Soviet anti-semitism and bring attention to the massacre at Babi Yar in Kiev by the Nazis in 1941. Over 34,000 Jews where murdered in the ravine Babi Yar over the course of 4 days, but official Soviet history distorted this event (and the Holocaust in the Soviet Union) by claiming it was targeting all Soviet citizens and not specifically Jews. Shostakovich was galvanized when he read this poem and worked on setting it to music, he ended up adding 4 other poems by Yevtushenko and expanding it to a symphony. The other poems were critical of different aspects of contemporary Soviet society, but the heart of the symphony has always been the opening setting of Babi Yar. Lastly, we hear from the new 25th anniversary album by Taraf de Haidouks, as reminder that though Jews were the highest priority targets for the Nazis, many other groups were deliberately murdered their genocidal sweep: Roma, disabled, homosexual.