Notes of Hope

My uncle took my son and me to an extremely moving and inspiring event commemorating both last week's Holocaust Memorial Day and this week's upcoming 70th Israel Independence Day.

The evening at Jerusalem's International Convention Centre (Binyanei Hauma) presented but a fraction of the thousands works written by Jewish composers, songwriters and poets during the Holocaust and lovingly collated by Italian-Jewish Professor Francesco Lotoro, who has made it his life's work to track down ever last piece of music or song written during the Holocaust, be it in a long lost hidden archive, remembered by a survivor or uncovered in a European attic. Prof Lotoro has dedicated himself to their preservation as a musical testimony to the creativity of those Jews who in their darkest hour still found a way to make life more beautiful, strove to live to the fullest even as death closed in all around.

JNF-UK and Israeli JNF introduced Prof Lotoro to a conservatory (a JNF-UK project) in the southern Israeli town of Yeruham. Prof Lotoro came to Yeruham to teach them a selection of works he had rescued, rehearsing with them, absorbing the stories behind the pieces and teaching them about the lives of the composers and songwriters. The programme combined educating the next generation about the Holocaust, testimonies from survivors and those who perished, wonderful music and Zionism, giving these long forgotten pieces born of horrific tragedy new life in the Israeli desert.

Tonight these youngsters performed what Prof Lotoro had taught them, accompanying the adult musicians of the Ashdod Symphony Orchestra on stage conducted by Francesco Lotoro.

During the Holocaust there was controversy among Jews in Nazi occupied Europe about whether art and music had a place in their living hell on earth. Some quoted Psalms 137 vivid description of the ancient Jewish exiles in Babylon hanging up their harps on the willows growing by Babylon's mighty rivers, refusing to play music for their Babylonian oppressors who tauntingly asked them to
sing "Songs of Zion".

Yet for many of the myriad Jewish intellectuals, artists and musicians suffering under the Nazi jackboot music, songs and poems were an act of resistance, of life and creativity in the face of a regime dedicated to death and destruction of the Jewish people. These compositions kept hope alive.

The most intense moment of the evening was when 86 year-old Aviva Bar-On sang in her still strong, clear voice a song that she had learnt in Terezin from Ilse Weber, a Jewish poet who worked as a nurse in the children's division in the Terezin ghetto. Weber and her son Tommy, along with most of the children she cared for were gassed to death in Auschwitz. Bar-On said that to the best of her knowledge she had been the last person in the world who knew these songs until she met with Prof Lotoro and he recorded and transcribed them and taught them to a new generation, ensuring that this works would survive even if their creator had perished.

Aside from one piece of hazzanut the songs performed were decidedly secular, mostly in German, Czech or Yiddish (one translated in to Yiddish from Polish), most in the cabaret style which was so popular during that period in Europe, a musical style which European Jews had helped to create and in which they were very prominent, to the extent that the Nazi regime had banned much of this music and closed many the clubs in which it was performed - many of the composers, singers, musicians and club owners were Jews, and so it was deemed "deviant", and yet the style was so popular that it could not be stamped out. It is a reflection of how much these Jews were part of the fabric of the European countries in which they lived. How much they seemed to have assimilated, how much they saw themselves as Europeans.

As my young son put it "Jews helped to create European culture, they even created a great deal of the European culture of that time and in the languages of European nations. When the Nazis and their collaborators murdered the Jews living amongst them they also murdered their very own (European) culture, the beauty of a culture that they themselves enjoyed. They hurt themselves."

תווים של תקווה

תווים של תקווה

ערב מרגש ביותר בבנייני האומה בסימן 70 למדינת ישראל ויום השואה ובו זכינו להכיר את

עבודת חייו של פרופסור יהודי איטלקי, פרנצ"סקו לוטורו, שהקדיש את חייו לחקר ושמירת יצירות מוסיקליות מתקופת השואה. היה זמן לשמוע רק חלק זעום ביותר מאלפי השירים והמנגינות שהצליח למצוא ולהציל מאבדון. פשוט מלאכת קודש.

קק"ל וJNF-UK חיברו בינו לבין תזמורת ילדים בבית המוסיקה בירוחם (פרויקט של JNF-UK) וכך נוצר הערב המיוחד הזה ששילב בין חינוך הדור הבא, עדות ניצולים וניספים בשואה, מוסיקה נפלאה וציונות.

אין מילים לתאר את המחזה של אישה בת 80 ומשהו עולה על הבמה בירושלים ושרה בקול צלול שיר שהיא למדה בטרזין, אחד מתוך אלה שכתבה והלחינה המשוררת היהודיה אילזה וובר שטיפלה בילדי טרזין. וובר ובנה טומי ורב מוחלט מהילדים בהם היא טיפלה נשרפו בכבשני אושוויץ ונותרה ניצולה אחת, אביבה בר-און, שזכרה את חלק מהיצירות בעל פה והקליטה את השירים לזכרה של וובר וילדי טרזין.

היה קטע אחד של חזנות, אך רב השירים היו בגרמנית, צ"כית וקצת יידיש וחלק ניכר היו בסגנון הקברט שהיה כה פופולרי באותה תקופה. כפי שבני בן ה8.5 העיר לי אח"כ "היהודים יצרו תרבות אירופית, אפילו יצרו חלק ניכר מהתרבות האירופית של אותם ימים ובשפה של העמים האירופים. כשהנאצים ועוזריהם רצחו את היהודים שחיו איתם הם גם רצחו לעצמם את התרבות שלהם, את היופי של התרבות שהם עצמם נהנו ממנו. הם פגעו העצמם."

Ghosts of the Holocaust

My grandmother and her sister were both great letter writers. In a family that fate had scattered to Poland, Britain, Argentina, the United States, Australia and Palestine their love and proficiency with the written world is what kept the far flung relatives in touch with one another via the central "hub" of these London based sisters.

It's the story of so many Jewish families spread out among whichever countries would take them, whichever states would grant them visas. Nobody planned it, but in the end that's the way things went and thank God for every great-great-aunt and great-great-uncle and cousin and great-grandparent who managed to make it to England and the US and in doing so established a base for other relatives to get out of eastern Europe, even if ultimately the could not get leave to remain in the countries they first arrived in and were forced to eventually settle on the other side of the globe.

Still not everyone could leave, not everyone could find a country that would take young unmarried men or women, or families with young children or their particular skill set. Or just plain didn't want any more Jews.

In the many years since my grandmother and great-aunt passed away I have still not managed to go through most of the many boxes of personal letters from family around the world, neatly written or chicken scratched, in ink and pencil, in Yiddish, English or Hebrew, but almost all in tiny letters to conserve space on precious tissue thin airmail paper or photographic postcards.



Considering that the Polish branch of the family was entirely wiped out, but for one distant cousin and one cousin by marriage, these papers are all the more treasured, not least because many contained photos, photos which my grandmother dutifully arranged in an album of the "overseas family".

Most of the photos are from the Polish and Argentinian sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law and cousins and it is this juxtaposition that brings home more than anything the fate of our murdered relatives. The Polish photos end around 1939 with some studio family portraits of parents and young children. Those of the Argentinian family go on to weddings and babies and family celebrations, from sepia to sharp black and white and to colour, years and decades after all that was left of the Polish side were old faded pictures of a vanished world.

A reminder of all the life stolen by the Nazis and their accomplices, not only of those children who would never grow up, but the weddings they would never have, the children they would never bear, lives unlived, futures brutally cut off before they even had a chance to truly dream of what those futures might hold.



There is no one left anymore who can truly remember these people beyond the photos and the barely legible faded handwritting. My grandmother's generation is long gone and my mother's generation are younger then the children in the photos, born during the war, not before it. They never had the chance to meet their Polish first cousins.

Both unsettling and comforting though is looking at those photos and seeing the surviving family in them. The women who look like my mother. The babies and toddlers who look so very much like some of my own children and my cousin's children born so many decades after the lives of those in the old black and white photos had been stomped and burnt out of existence, murdered solely for the crime of being Jews.

Sometimes I think I see their ghosts amongst the living, a flitting memory of cousins and great-aunts whom none of us ever had the chance to meet beyond their frozen sepia images. And yet something of them lives on in this new generation of our family born in a new century under bright Israeli skies in a young and strong Jewish State. We take elements of them with us, within us, even if we never got to know them enough to realise it.

There can be no true comfort for this level of loss, for the branches of our family murdered by the Nazis, but these glimpses of genetic memory peaking out from a new generation's faces are our victory and theirs. They did not vanish in to history's oblivion as Hitler had planned, they live on with us because the Jewish people still lives.

In this 70th year of Israel's independence we take them with us as we give thanks for our nation's survival and rebirth out of the ashes.

Thunderbolts and Lightning

Yes, I am still up because the lightning in this storm has been something else. There's been some stunning forks of light across the valley and some incredibly bright flashes right overhead illuminating everything as day with great white intensity.

A couple of times the lightning was so close I could feel it buzz through the building, a physical thing humming through everything, the thunder booming almost at the same time as the lightning flare. Very impressive.

Electricity has flickered on and off quite a few times, just the briefest out and then back on on, and then fizz out, and back on. I seem to be the only one unable to sleep through it, B"H kids are cuddled up in their blankets in their beds (yes, everyone in their own beds!!!) oblivious to the storm.

Barukh Hashem for the sorely needed rain we've had tonight, much of it in torrential quantities, some of it as hail.

Jumpin' Jack Flash

Yes, I am still up because the lightning in this storm has been something else. There's been some stunning forks of light across the valley and some incredibly bright flashes right overhead illuminating everything as day with great white intensity.

A couple of times the lightning was so close I could feel it buzz through the building, a living physical thing humming through everything, the thunder booming almost at the same time as the lightning flare. Very impressive.

Electricity has flickered on and off quite a few times, just the briefest out and then back on on, and then fizz out, and back on.

Some small appliances seem to be fried. The running light on the vacuum cleaner that was charging has gone out and seems dead as does my small radio/disc player. 

I seem to be the only one unable to sleep through it, B"H kids are cuddled up in their blankets in their beds (yes, everyone in their own beds!!!) oblivious to the storm.

Barukh Hashem for the sorely needed rain we've had tonight, much of it in torrential quantities, some of it as hail. Looking forward to the greenery and blooming flowers it will bring. If you listen hard you can hear the soaked earth sighing in contentment.

Blue and white and red all over

I really didn't particularly want to go to the Red Army Choir concert tonight, but my daughter couldn't come and there was a ticket going, so I went and boy am I glad that I did.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't enjoy choirs or Russian music, I imbibed both with my mother's milk, I just had so much to do this evening that the thought of a late night out including schlepping in and out of the "big city" just didn't appeal, and maybe if it had just been the Red Army Choir and dance ensemble, talented as they are, it wouldn't have been worth the schlep and time right now, but tonight was so much more.

It all started out as a typical Red Army Choir performance, a military orchestra featuring a great many balalaikas and a troupe of uniformed men with deep voices singing Russian patriotic and folk songs, each baritone soloist showing off greater vocal flourishes than his predecessor while video screens showed clips of Second World War Soviet propaganda films of smiling Soviet soldiers and pilots or modern colour images of Russian landscapes and aerobatic displays. There was even a black and white sequence showing trainloads of soldiers returning from war being greeted by women bearing flowers, the front of the steam engine adorned with Lenin's stern visage.

In between songs the supremely talented dancers dressed in World War Two era uniforms or Russian folk costumes pranced and twirled and kazachkad  on stage to the strains of folk or military instrumental numbers, cheered on by the audience as the routines became more and more complex and gravity defying.

Then legendary Israeli radio announcer Dan Kaner came on stage to announce a guest artist, none other than even more legendary Israeli singer and musicals star Dudu Fisher, for a joint effort by an Israeli performer with the Red Army Choir: Adon Olam, Kol Nidrei and A Yiddishe Mameh. The crowd went wild, then hushed.

Beside me my 8 year-old son's eyes grew wide with excitement.

"Ima, it's Dudu from Hagan Shel Dudu!" (Dudu's kindergarten, a popular series of Israeli children's videos)

As the opening strains of the music were heard he couldn't contain himself, whispering in my ear "Ima, it's Uzi Hitman's "Adon Olam"!

On stage Dudu Fisher had been joined by one of the smiling rosy cheeked Red Army Choir soloists, clad in a pristine white and gold uniform and singing the well known modern arrangement of this ancient Hebrew prayer written by beloved Israeli songwriter Uzi Hitman.

A Red Army Choir soloist singing in Hebrew, and not just any old Israeli song, but a deeply cherished and ancient Hebrew prayer in a duet with Israel's most famous Orthodox Jewish singer. Who could have imagined such a thing?

Glancing to my right I saw that my uncle had tears streaming down his cheeks. All around me there were fellow Israelis watching and listening with smiles on their faces and eyes and faces glistening with tears that flowed more and more as Dudu Fisher led the Russian troupe in Kol Nidrei and A Yiddishe Mama.

You had to be there to believe it, like a taste of the coming of the Messiah.

After all the years of Soviet and Russian persecution of the Jews, all the years of oppression during which learning Hebrew and practicing Judaism were suppressed who could have conceived of an event like this, one of the most famous official Russian folklore and patriotic ensembles, an official entertainment troupe of the Russian military no less, standing on the stage of Tel Aviv's famous concert hall packed to the gills with Israelis, many of them religious, performing Hebrew language prayers alongside a religious Israeli singer?

The campaign for Soviet Jewry and non-Jewish Soviet dissidents was a fundamental part of my childhood. I was taken to my first meetings and demonstrations while still in my mother's womb. I grew up writing letters to Soviet Jewish children my age and drawing pictures to show support for imprisoned Soviet Jewish refuseniks, arrested on trumped up charges for the simple desire to make aliyah to the Jewish state or teach Hebrew to fellow Jews.

Back in the late 70s and 80s my family and family friends would have protested outside a concert by an official Soviet group like the Red Army Choir. Sitting in the audience tonight during the series of Russian folk numbers and dance routines part of me had a moment of confusion wondering if I should be jumping up in the middle of a Russian patriotic song and shouting "Let my people go!", the rallying cry of the movement campaigning for the right of Soviet Jews denied exit visas to leave the USSR and emigrate to Israel.

My uncle had travelled to the Soviet Union carrying suitcases with secret compartments stuffed with illegal items like Jewish prayer books, tefillin and teaching aids for learning Hebrew, the cassettes disguised as recordings of the classics, with music at the beginning, then a Hebrew lesson and more classical music at the end to hide the true contents of the tape. He was successful at smuggling these items to Moscow, along with vital medications for Refuseniks, evading the suspicion of the KGB with his innocent smile and copious purchases of official Soviet Communist publications at every tourist shop. 

And here he was sitting in the audience of a Tel Aviv concert hall crying as Dudu Fisher sang in Hebrew and Yiddish with the Red Army Choir like a vision of the end of days. Way to say "we won" and have the likes of Stalin and Brezhnev turning in their graves.

Looking at the weeping adults around him, many of them elderly Bubbes and Zaydes, my 8 year-old son was puzzled as to why the star of Dudu's Kindergarten had made them cry.

אני מאמין

אחרית הימים. דודו פישר עולה על הבמה בהיכל התרבות בת"א ושר את אדון עולם של עוזי חיטמן, כל נדרי ויידישע מאמע מלווה במקהלת הצבא האדום ואחד מסולניו. ששרים איתו בעברית וביידיש.

אני יושבת ליד הדוד שלי, שהיה פעיל למען יהודי ברית המועצות והיה נוסע למוסקבה כדי להבריח ספרים וקלטות לימוד בעברית, תשמישי קדושה ואף תרופות חיוניות למסורבי עליה. יש לו דמעות בעיניים וכשאני מסתכלת מסביב ברור לי שאינו היחיד, רחוק מאד מלהיות היחיד שחווה את המעמד ההזוי הזה ודומע מרב התרגשות.

והמופע הזה באמת הזוי. כל השנים האלה של דיכוי היהדות היהודים והשפה העברית והנה גולת הכותרת של הלהקות היצוגיות מרוסיה עומדת שם על במה בתל אביב לבוש מדי צבא רוסיים מפוארים מול אולם מלא עד אפס מקום בישראלים כולל לא מעט חובשי כיפות. היא פותחת את המופע כצפוי עם שירים רוסיים פטריוטים (מלווים בקטעי וידיאו עוד יותר פטריוטיים של הצבא האדום במלחמת העולם השניה) ואז מופיע דן כנר על הבמה ומזמין את דודו פישר חובש הכיפה לשיר עם מקהלת הצבא האדום את אדון עולם. והנה עומד ליד דודו פישר סולן הלהקה במדי לבן וזהב ושר דואט איתו, לא סתם שיר בעברית אלא תפילה בעברית, אחת התפילות הכי מפורסמות.

אין מה להגיד, אחרית הימים, מי היה מאמין.

ובן השמונה שיושב לידי לא מבין את פשר הדבר, למה מסביבו יושבים מבוגרים, בעיקר סבים וסבתות, ובוכים כשכוכב הגן של דודו מתחיל לשי