 "Concert in the Coffeehouse"
Drawing by Bedrich Fritta
As the fall of 1944 approached and their war strength waned,
Hitler and his German armies began to realize their days was
limited and their empire poised to shrink. Retreats from the
Russian fronts looked inevitable, which meant concentration
camps of the East were in danger of eventual discovery by
the Allies. Time was growing short to continue liquidating
the Jewish population in camps like Auschwitz, so the Nazi
made haste in sending transports while they still could. Between
September 23 and October 28 of 1944, nearly 24,000 Terezin
inmates were sent to the gas chambers and crematoriums of
Auschwitz. With the camp in disarray and the Council of Elders
helplessly powerless, there was no longer any concept of protection.
The transport of October 16 was therefore full of Freizeitgestaltung employees, from the Ghetto Swingers to Gideon Klein,
Karel Ancerl’s string orchestra to Rafael Schacter, Pavel
Haas to Hans Krasa…the list went on. Of all these men and
their families on this particular transport, only Karel Ancerl
escaped the gas chamber and survived. Other musicians to survive,
either by remaining in Terezin or by overcoming the odds of
the Auschwitz and further tortures, included Karel Berman,
Martin Roman, Edith Steiner-Kraus and Alice Herz-Sommer.
The last two women were among a
number of other, primarily female, musicians who avoided the final deportations
of September and October 1944. Without the pivotal Freizeitgestaltung members, cultural life was initially returned to
a haphazard state. However, the addition of Jews from mixed-marriages to the
camp population in late 1944 and early 1945 helped reinstate musical activities
among the beleaguered musicians who were left behind. As Free Time Activities were reorganized, recitals, concerts, and
musical dramas continued to bring solace to the prisoners desperately awaiting
the end of a seemingly endless war. When the camp was finally liberated on May
8th of 1945, the music of repression, undefeated, had played on
until the end.
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