Holocaust remembered through music, film, art

A three-pronged program will mark the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust, Czech Ambassador Stanislav Slavicky announced last Thursday. On April 28, an exhibit "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" at the CCP Little Theater Lobby will consist of drawings, essays and poetry of Jewish children and young adults interned at the Terezin Camp and Ghetto near Prague. A screening of "Transport from Paradise" at the CCP Little Theater will follow.

On April 29 at 8 p.m., a concert "Remembering Terezin" will be presented by Ambassador Slavicky, Israeli Ambassador Yehoshua Sagi and the CCP featuring three Czech Jewish composers, Israeli pianist Noam Sivan and Eugene Castillo who will conduct the PPO.

The three composers – Pavel Haas (Scherzo Triste), Viktor Ullmann (Concerto for Piano and Orchestra) and Gideon Klein (Partita for Strings) were interned in Terezin; Haas and Ullmann were transported to Auschwitz where they perished in its gas chambers. From Auschwitz, Klein was moved to another camp. Forced to work in the coal mines, he died under mysterious circumstances.

Unlike other Nazi camps, Terezin was a model one which inmates turned into a temple of art: children sketched and drew, young adults wrote poems and essays, musicians composed or performed. Eugene Castillo pointed out there was even a chorus which sang Verdi’s Requiem. When the entire chorus would be transported to Auschwitz, another choir would be formed, singing the entire Requiem from memory, with the orchestra playing on the few instruments available and an out-of-tune piano. Castillo emphasized that the uncertainty of life in Terezin could not stop the creativity of the composers – as the forthcoming concert will prove. Through their music, listeners will remember Terezin.

A versatile artist, pianist Sivan is a composer, arranger and improvistore. On a "virtuoso" performance of his, a critic wrote: "After playing the Chopin Sonata No. 3, Sivan began improvising – in Chopin’s style!" The New York Concert Review described his double role as pianist-composer a "superb realization and wonderfully warm-hearted", and his compositions "expressive and lyrical".

January 2005 saw the premiere of his Suspended Magicians for eight dancers and chamber ensemble at NY’s Lincoln Center, with the composer as piano soloist. Sivan has performed in major US cities, Europe and throughout Israel. Currently, he is a doctoral fellow in Julliard, NY.

To return to the Holocaust, Ambassador Shagi spoke on how the Jews, while fleeing Europe before World War II, were repeatedly denied sanctuary. Over 900 refugees left for Cuba and were refused entry in Havana. They sailed for Florida where they were turned away.

CCP Vice-President and Artistic Director Nanding Josef pointed to Philippine Ambassador to Israel, Antonio C. Modena, pushing for the recognition of the Filipino role in saving the Jews. In the 1930s, at the height of the Holocaust, some 1,850 German and Austrian Jews took refuge in Manila. This is documented by the book Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror by Frank Ephraim who escaped with his parents to Manila.

The Filipino’s helping hand has not been duly recognized world-wide but the Center for Holocaust and Humanity has proclaimed Quezon "Righteous Person", the title given by the Jews to non-Jews who helped save lives.

Josef recalled how on his visit to Buchenwald Camp in Weimer, he saw at close range the incinerators, bathrooms of acid, and a huge glass cabinet containing heaps of tiny shoes, clothes and the blond hair strands of the children who were used by the Nazis as guinea pigs.

Israeli Deputy Chief of Mission Guy Feldman who, like the others, was introduced by emcee Irene Rada, gave his own individual insights of Nazi persecution.

Ambassador Slavicky recalled how a number of Czech citizens in Manila fought with the Filipino soldiers during World War II, later perishing with them.

Shifting again to the Terezin Ghetto, unfortunately, even as transports arrived there, others began to leave – into the unknown. From Oct. 1942 virtually all went to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most terrifying of the extermination camps. In all, 63 transports left Terezin for the East, carrying a total of more than 87,000 individuals; of these, only 3800 would see liberation. The fate of the children was equally tragic; of the 7590 deported only 142 survived. Only those who remained at Terezin had a chance of being saved. Their lives are reflected in verses, diaries, and thousands of drawings – some of which will be shown at the CCP exhibit. The poignant poem I’ll Never See Another Butterfly by Pavel Friedmann, who died at age 23, is reproduced here: The last, the very last / So richly, brightly, dazzingly yellow / Perhaps, if the sun’s tears would sing / against a white stone . . . / Such, such a yellow / is carried lightly ‘way up high, / It went away I’m sure because it wished / to kiss the world goodbye. / For seven weeks I’ve lived in here / Penned up inside this ghetto / But I have found my people here / The dandelions call to me / And the white chestnut candles in the court / Only I never saw another butterfly / That butterfly was the last one / Butterflies don’t live in here / In the ghetto.

The movie Transport from Paradise is based on a novel by Arnost Lustig who survived Terezin. Directed by Zbyneck Brynyoh, it portrays the "devastating brutality against the Jews in Czechoslovakia".

Thus, as pleasant as the Nazis try to make Terezin, the inmates are always terrified about being shipped elsewhere. When the chairman of the Council of Elders is requested to authorize a transport to another camp with gas chambers, he refuses to sign the order. The Nazis simply get rid of him and find someone else to comply. A group is rounded up; without realizing where they are headed, the prisoners save places on the train for their loved ones, and in the film’s haunting final scene, they board the transport to their death.

Focolare Familyfest

The Focolare Movement will hold a family fest today. A mass by the bishop of Antipolo Cathedral will be at 5 p.m. and a program at the Ynares Coliseum, from 8 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., will follow.

The Familyfest is presented by the New Families Movement founded by Chiara Lubich in 1967.