An Evening of Music & Memory of the Holocaust

Songs & Stories by Dr. Karen Uslin Scheduled for April 23
On Sunday evening, April 23 at 7 p.m., Beth Judah Wildwood will commemorate Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) with “An Evening of Music & Memory of The Holocaust.” This special program will be held at Beth Judah Social Hall, Spencer and Pacific avenues, Wildwood and is free and open to the community.
For many victims of Nazi brutality, music was an important means of preserving and asserting their humanity. This music also serves as a form of historical documentation; a telling glimpse into the events and emotions that their creators and original audiences experienced firsthand. This year’s program will feature stories and songs performed by Karen Uslin. She is adjunct professor of Musicology and Fellow for the Center of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Rowan University. Dr. Uslin will focus on what happened in the Theresienstadt (Terezin) Concentration Camp where music offered Jews a way to escape from reality, gave voice to their yearning for freedom, and offered ways to find comfort and hope amidst inhuman conditions.
In November, 1941, noted conductor Rafael Schächter gathered his belongings in preparation of being deported to Terezin. While many of us in that situation may focus on packing necessities such as food and clothes, Schächter chose two musical scores to bring with him: Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride” and Verdi’s “Requiem.” This latter piece, a Catholic mass for the dead and a representation of Italian nationalism, would become a piece of resistance, a Kaddish* (a Jewish prayer in memory of the dead) in the midst of a Nazi concentration camp.
The Latin liturgy talks about the end of the world and what happens to those who commit evil. Even as they were facing their own destruction, the Jews, through the Requiem, were telling the Nazis how the Third Reich was doomed. Schächter conducted an adult chorus of 150 Jews which engaged in 16 performances of the massive and complex “Requiem” learned by rote from a single vocal score and accompanied by a legless upright piano—before audiences of other prisoners, SS officers, and German army staff members. Their purpose: to sing to their captors words that could not be spoken.
Schächter himself died on a 1945 death march from Auschwitz, but survivors who sang in his “Requiem” credit their lives to this piece and one man’s mission to use music as a means of defiance. In doing so, they all proved that the way to combat the worst of humanity is to find strength and courage in humanity’s best.
Dr. Uslin received her Ph.D. in musicology from The Catholic University of America in 2015, her bachelor’s degree in Music and Theater from Muhlenberg College and her master’s degree in Music History from Temple University. She is currently under contract with Indiana University Press to publish an English source on the writings of Terezin composer Viktor Ullmann. She has also performed at various venues around the world, including the Vatican, the Academy of Music in Philadelphia and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
* NOTE: Although one form of the Kaddish is recited in memory of the dead, the prayer itself says nothing about death; its theme is the greatness of God, reflected in its opening words: “Yitgadal ve-yitkadash, Shmei rabbah–May His name be magnified and made holy…” The prayer’s conclusion speaks of a future age in which God will redeem the world.
For more information, visit Beth Judah Wildwood, Spencer and Pacific avenues in Wildwood. Visit Beth Judah Wildwood online at www.bethjudahtemple.org, or email bethjudahtemple@yahoo.com.