Music and the Holocaust

Violinist and dance band leader Efim Schachmeister was born #OTD in 1894. Playing a mixture of jazz and Schtetl styles he was a prime target for Nazi persecution. Escaping to Belgium, then Luxembourg and in 1936, exiled to Argentina where he died in 1944. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efim_Scha…

Pianist and light entertainer Walter Sachs was born in Dresden #OTD in 1888. He was deported from Berlin on 18th October 1941. Walter Sachs and is considered missing in the Łódź Ghetto. kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/dresden/Agata_…

Composer, conductor and music-educator Klaus Pringsheim was born #OTD in 1883. He studied under Gustav Mahler and became a resident of Japan in 1931, and was revered for his popularisation of Western classical music there. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Pri….

Composer, arranger, conductor and choirmaster Curt Goldmann was born #OTD in 1870. He created arrangements of the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" which, in the Encyclopedia of Jews in Music were referred to as "pseudo-Nazi". lexm.uni-hamburg.de/object/lexm_le…

Latvian tenor and cantor Mikhail Alexandrovich (born #OTD in 1914) was an acclaimed performer of classical repertoire. While he lived out WWII in the USSR, his family and his wife's family did not survive the Holocaust. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_A…

Composer and pianist Erich Itor Kahn was born #OTD in 1905. He composed in the twelve-tone school of Schoenberg and hence was considered degenerate by the Nazis. He composed in exile in France but was interned there before emigration to Casablanca in 1941. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Ito…

Born #OTD in 1928, George Dreyfus moved to Berlin with his parents in 1935. In 1939 he traveled to Australia on a kindertransport, where he began a career as an orchestral musician and became the first freelance composer in Australia. australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/dreyfus…

Conductor and music director Hans Rosbaud was born #OTD in 1895. During the 1920s and 1930s, he presented premieres of works by Arnold Schoenberg and Béla Bartók though he despised jazz. During the Nazi era, his freedom to present new music was restricted. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosb…

The much-loved voice of the Łódź ghetto Yankele Hershkovitsh (born #OTD in 1910) was a one-man cabaret, offering social and political satire, humour and parodies of popular songs in response to daily life in the ghetto. holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/ghettos…

Vocal coach, accompanist, composer and writer Otto Janowitz was born #OTD in 1888. He emigrated to the US in 1938 and became the assistant conductor of the Mozart Opera Company in New York, a position he held until 1941. snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w6c…

August Agbola O'Browne (born #OTD in 1895 in Lagos) found himself working in Warsaw clubs as a professional musician. It is believed that he fought in the Invasion of Poland in 1939, defending a besieged Warsaw, and in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Ag…

As a young girl Philomena Franz, born #OTD in 1922, sang and danced as a member of her musical family’s company. As a Sinti she was interned and wrote of her experiences in the concentration camps. She died aged 100 in 2022. romarchive.eu/en/collection/…

Composer, horn-player, and music critic Yochanan Boehm was born #OTD in Breslau, 1914. He immigrated to Israel in 1936 and taught at the Jerusalem Music Academy. He founded the Jerusalem Youth Orchestra in 1959 and directed it for 20 years. encyclopedia.com/religion/encyc…

Croatian violinist, conductor and music teacher Ljerko Spiller was born #OTD in 1908. In 1935 he won a prize at the International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition and that year escaped Europe to Buenos Aires. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljerko_Sp…

Composer Robert Kahn was born #OTD in 1865. Ordered to resign from the Prussian Academy of Arts, his music was prohibited from publication and performance. Exiled to England in 1938 his final years were lived in obscurity leaving 1,000 unpublished pieces. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ka…

Conductor and composer Michael Gielen (born #OTD in 1927) was studying Schönberg works by age 11. He and his family left Berlin in 1937 for Vienna and were forced into exile in Argentina as his mother was Jewish and his father opposed National Socialism. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_G…

Viennese-American violinist Rudolf Kolisch (born #OTD in 1896) was stranded in NY when the US joined WWII. He struggled to keep his touring quartet together and, in 1939, took up teaching at The New School, NY. snaccooperative.org/view/43152735

Composer and conductor Vilem Tauský was born #OTD in 1910. He orchestrated an operetta based on music by Bizet in exchange for the money for an exit visa to France, which he collected from the Gestapo in person. holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and…

Czech composer, military conductor, violinist and music teacher Karol Rund Zdenko was born #OTD in 1889. After the September campaign of 1939, he was interned in Romania, and from 1941 he was a political prisoner in German camps. pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Rund

Composer Venjamin Fleischmann (born #OTD in 1913) never finished his first opera started in 1939. He joined an untrained military brigade of which only a few survived. His teacher, Shostakovich, decided to complete his libretto and orchestrate it. nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_…