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In early November 1938, authorities watched synagogues burn in Nazi Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland.
During the November Pogrom, also called Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, rioters looted and damaged thousands of Jewish businesses, schools and homes. Some 91 Jews were killed, and 30,000 more were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Firefighters stood by just to make sure the flames didn’t spread to adjacent “Aryan” properties. It marked the prelude to the Holocaust that would follow.
In Hollywood during the same period, Jewish-European composers in exile who had escaped the Nazi regime were reinventing the definition of the soundtrack.
Ross Giblin / Stuff
Cellist Inbal Megiddo takes part in the upcoming New Zealand Holocaust Center Kristallnacht commemorative concert.
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Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Austrian and German composers who had fled to the United States found work in the industry, which had taken off thanks to the invention of the “talkie” from the back of silent movies.
Many of those artists received praise: Austrian-born Erich Korngold received an Oscar for his score Anthony Adverso and then again for The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Korngold was not alone: there were Ernst Toch, Franz Waxman and Mieczysław Weinberg.
Their classical and jazz music lives beyond the horrors of their time, music to be performed by New Zealand artists in an annual commemorative concert on Monday at Wellington’s Public Trust Hall.
Warwick Smith / Stuff
New Zealand Holocaust Center Executive Director Chris Harris says the concert is important from both a historical and contemporary perspective.
Organized by the New Zealand Holocaust Center in association with Te Kōkī – New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University of Wellington, the concert promises to be a multimedia experience, with visual excerpts from the corresponding films shown before each performance. individual.
Inbal Megiddo, a cellist and keynote speaker at Te Kōkī who helped organize the concert, says it is a subject close to her heart: she teaches a course on music and conflict featuring the Holocaust.
Megiddo also has a personal interest in how music affected people who lived through the Holocaust, both as Nazi government propaganda, as well as when it was written and used for resistance and survival in camps and ghettos.
“It was food for the soul … [it allowed] some of these people to be able to continue in dire circumstances, ”he says.
Ross Giblin / Stuff
Megiddo says it is often easy to be distant with the Holocaust. The concert is about awareness, appreciation, commemoration, and remembrance.
There was also Forbidden Music, music forbidden by the Third Reich when the Nazis realized its power. They tried to silence Jewish musicians and suppress other works of art from persecuted groups: Africans, Gypsies, members of the rainbow community.
Many composers killed in concentration camps would have been household names. The influence their deaths had on the music trajectory was immense, Megiddo says. “Its a big lost”.
This year’s theme, in line with those who escaped, was “resilience and reinvention.” Artists who fled had a hard time reconciling their new Hollywood identities and often struggled to keep in touch with their families.
The concert will be recorded so that people can listen to it after the fact. While it was hard not to be gloomy with a subject like the Holocaust, the night is also about celebrating the work and legacy of Jewish artists.
“It is to give voice to people who have lost their voice.”
The evening will conclude with a jazz tribute to New York’s Blue Note Records, a major label founded by German Jewish immigrants Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion, which recorded legendary 20th century African American musicians in a time of racial conflict.
Franz Waxman Family Photo Collection
Composer Franz Waxman is one of the honored artists.
Blue Note went on to work with stars like Norah Jones and Jason Moran.
Chris Harris, executive director of the Holocaust Center, says the concert aligns with the four key pillars of the center: witness, remember, educate and act. It is important not just historically, but in relation to contemporary times, he says.
“From a historical point of view, this was an important event and should never be forgotten,” says Harris.
“Kristallnacht marked a turning point, when extremist ideologies turned into acts of violence. For the current context, this reminds us that we must remain vigilant and speak up when we see discrimination and prejudice, not to be a bystander but to be an advocate. “
Megiddo says it’s easy to be distant with the Holocaust. It is important, “especially with everything that happens in the world”, never to forget.
For the dead and the living, we must be witnesses: Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor.
Tickets online.
