By Noah Southard
I was very privileged to participate in “The Liberation Tour” of Europe with the Terezin Music Foundation and the Boston Children’s Chorus (BCC) performance chorus groups, the Premier Choir and the Young Men’s Ensemble. I started singing with the BCC Young Men’s Ensemble one year ago. The artistic conductor is Dr. Anthony Trecek-King. He and other BCC staff – Ben Hires, Ashley Mac, Sarah Koonce, Michelle Adams, John Reynolds, Whitney Simmonds, and Karen Fitton led the tour. There were 70 singers, 14 thru 18 years old on the tour. I went with other Bedford singers Chloe DeMello, Bryan Werth, Brad Aldrich, Matthew Bridgeman and Eran Zelixon.
We went to Prague, Czech Republic, and Dresden and Berlin, Germany, between June 25 and July 5, 2015. We rehearsed almost every day and sang in five concerts. At Prague’s Spanish Synagogue, we premiered three new songs commissioned for the tour that went along with the theme of honoring the Liberation of Europe from the Nazis 70 years ago. We had cultural and music exchanges with a Czech youth group and the Auschwitz youth group in Berlin. It was an amazing trip that I’ll always remember!
During the year in preparation for the trip, I learned about the Holocaust, mostly about Theresienstadt or Terezin, a fortress town about 35 miles north of Prague that became a Nazi concentration camp in 1942 and a place of propaganda for the Nazis to show the world a “model Jewish ghetto.”. More than 50,000 Czech Jews were forced there by the Nazis. Many more were transported through Terezin to Auschwitz.
Here are some of the photos I took at Terezin…
Click each image in the gallery to see full-sized photographs of Terazin (c) Noah Southard, 2015 all rights reserved
Last October, the BCC singers had a workshop with Ela Stein Weissberger. She was one of 100 survivors of Terezin. She was 11 when she was first forced to live at Terezin with her family. She can be seen on a Nazi propaganda film where she and many other children were forced to sing the Brundibár opera for the entertainment of the Nazis and their guests. We at the BCC performed a piece from Brundibár with Weissberger at Symphony Hall last October. One of things I remember from talking with her was that she wanted to make sure that people of my generation remember the past so that no other holocaust will be allowed to happen again.
We visited Terezin on June 28. When the tour bus pulled up the gates of Terezin, we were acting like typical teenagers. We laughed, took photos, the usual things choral groups do on vacation. But as soon as we entered the walls of the town, the group hushed. We became silent. We could immediately realize that we were in a terrible and solemn place. It was a place of contrasts. The beautiful greenery on a beautiful blue-sky day was overshadowed by the presence of horrible oppression, death and tragedy.
We saw the overcrowded conditions in which Jewish men, women and children were forced to live in Terezin. We stood in the isolation chambers meant for one or two people. But the Nazis crammed between 20 to 40 people in a room. People died from the horrible conditions. We visited the execution sites and mass graves that now stand as memorials for the innocent people who were murdered by the Nazis. We learned how music was both a source of hope and resistance for Jews. We saw films of their beautiful music. Still, we could hear the pain and suffering in their voices.
In honor of the survivors, we participated in a candle lighting ceremony where we each placed a small candle in the crematorium at Terezin. It was a moment that I will always remember.
We had one of our music rehearsals in the attic of a building at Terezin. I recognized the freedom that I have to be able to sing by my own choice, while the Jewish musicians during WWII were forced to sing while being starved to death and tortured.
If anyone wants to read a good book to learn more, I recommend Terezin: Voices from the Holocaust by Ruth Thomson. Every page has facts and quotes from people who survived Terezin and witnesses. One Czech actress, Hana Pravada, is quoted in the book as saying:
“We had shows almost every night in the attics and in the cellars. We had four pianos – only real professional virtuosos were allowed to play them. There were singing choirs. You could listen to lectures on the history of art, on physics, on mathematics. We had books, we had poetry, we had evenings of poetry, and all this worked miracles on the morale of people, I assure you, even if they were hungry.”
If you want to learn more about the music of Terezin and listen to some of the incredible musicians, I recommend going to the Terezin Music Foundation’s website at www.terezinmusic.org.
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