Main Entrance to Small Fortress at Terezin

Performance of "Defiant Requiem -- Verdi at Terezin,"

May 21, 2006 , Terezin , Czech Republic

J. Timothy Sprehe

jtsprehe@jtsprehe.com

Revised July 2, 2006

Defiant Requiem -- Verdi at Terezin is a concert drama written by Murry Sidlin, symphonic conductor and Dean of the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music at Catholic University of America. Defiant Requiem is based on authentic testimonies of those who passed through the World War II Nazi concentration camp in Terezin , Czech Republic . It includes the performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem as a tribute to the legendary musician Rafael Schächter. At Terezin, the Jewish prisoners rose above the inhuman conditions of their captivity and coming death through an astonishingly rich cultural life. Among their most notable accomplishments was Rafael Schächter’s leading a chorus of 150 prisoners in sixteen performances of Verdi’s Requiem  during 1943-1944 as a way of “singing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.” This is the story of my participation in an historic memorial performance of the Defiant Requiem on May 21, 2006 , at Terezin, CR.

Terezin

On a spring day, Terezin’s watch tower can be seen clearly from ten kilometers away, standing out from the countryside. You have been driving through gently rolling farm country, the green crops often relieved by fields of brilliant yellow rape grain, the plant from which Americans get canola oil. An hour north of Prague the road passes through several small villages, where each house has its neatly maintained vegetable garden. You round a curve and suddenly to the right you see a large moat, 50 yards across and empty now except for a small stream. On the other side of the moat rise the squat red walls of Terezin’s Small Fortress. The town is small, perhaps ten thousand in population. It is all very peaceful.

Terezin – or Theresienstadt in German -- was built in 1780 by Emperor Joseph II of Austria and named after his mother, Empress Maria Theresa. Terezin consisted of the Big Fortress and the Small Fortress. The Big Fortress was surrounded by ramparts and contained barracks. Its purpose was to protect the Austro-Hungarian Empire from Prussian incursion. After 1882, Terezin was no longer used as a fortress. For the next several decades, the garrison town of Terezin remained virtually the same, almost entirely separated from the rest of the countryside. The Small Fortress was once even used as a prison for dangerous criminals. Terezin changed dramatically when the Nazis chose it as the site of a concentration camp and sent the first Jewish transports there in November 1941.

Over the next several years, the Nazis evacuated the 7,000 Czech residents of Terezin and transformed the town into a concentration camp that held from 35,000 to 60,000 Jewish prisoners. With a Jewish population this large inhabiting an area originally designed for only 7,000, disease and lack of food were constant concerns. In 1942, the Nazis built a crematorium capable of disposing of 190 corpses per day just to handle the death toll caused by starvation, absence of medicine, and cramped unhealthy living conditions. More than 33, 000 people died in Terezin, very few from execution. During the course of the war, 140,000 Jews, 17,000 of them children, passed through Theresienstadt before being transported to the death camps at Auschwitz and elsewhere; few survived.

Restored Prisoners Quarters (Source: Terezin Memorial Website)

Transcending the inhuman conditions, life and death within Theresienstadt focused principally on the frequent transports east to Auschwitz beginning in the summer of 1942. The Nazis forced the Jews to decide just which Jews would make up the quota set for each train. Each person’s obsession became remaining "protected" from being one of those chosen to fulfill a quota.

The Jewish prisoners subjected to this inhuman regimen included distinguished scholars and scientists in all fields, painters, sculptors, composers, instrumentalists, operatic divas, and other musicians. They determined to to maintain their spirits in the face of  their conditions by continuing their intellectual and artistic endeavors for the benefit of fellow prisoners after their long workdays on meager rations. One musician, Rafael Schächter, devoted himself to making music in Theresienstadt. In addition to such musical endeavors as staging operas, Schächter directed a chorus of 150 in performing Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem. Schächter had a single copy of the Verdi score and his chorus learned the work by rote (today’s piano-reduction choral score runs to 140 pages). In 1943 and 1944, they performed the Requiem sixteen times accompanied only on a legless piano propped up on boxes.

Conductor Murry Sidlin learned of the music at Terezin and heard Schächter’s story in the 1990’s. He began researching the concentration camp and Schächter, eventually tapping into the diminishing network of Terezin survivors. Sidlin wrote the concert drama Defiant Requiem -- Verdi at Terezin, which was first performed under his baton by the Oregon Symphony in 2002 and again at the Catholic University of America (CUA) in 2004. The work interweaves Verdi’s Requiem with video clips from survivors, dramatic readings, and Nazi film footage. In 2006, the Terezin Memorial invited Sidlin to perform the Defiant Requiem at Terezin as part of the 2006 Prague Spring, the first time that this cultural event has included a performance outside of Prague . The CUA Chorus invited members of the Washington Chorus, a Grammy-award winning symphonic chorus of 200-plus voices, to join in the trip and concert performance; about 40 singers did so. I sing in the Washington Chorus and my wife and I joined the trip.

Murry Sidlin conducting at Terezin (Source: Prague Spring website)

The Terezin Experience

The augmented CUA chorus and orchestra came to Terezin on Saturday, May 20 for rehearsal, and on Sunday, May 21, for performance. The chorus numbered 135 singers, plus four soloists, and the orchestra added another 70 performers. A film crew accompanied us to make a film about the concert. The performance featured soloists Sharon Christman (soprano), Eleni Matos (mezzo-soprano), Steven Tharp (tenor), and Gary Relyea (bass). Narrators were Murry Sidlin, Gary Sloan as Rafael Schächter and John Lescault as Lecturer, playing several parts. The Catholic University of American Chorus, Leo Nestor chorusmaster, was augmented by members of the Washington Chorus and the CUA Symphony Orchestra was joined by Virtuosi Pragenses. The work was presented in English, except for the Latin text of the Requiem. Film clips of survivors speaking had been created when the work was first performed in 2002 and were part of a PBS broadcast derived from that performance.  

Rehearsing in basement. (Source: Marv and Elaine Wunderlich)

Murry Sidlin had explained to the chorus that part of our Terezin experience would be to rehearse in the cramped basement space the prisoners had practiced in. On Saturday, we all entered an old military barracks building in the heart of Terezin and trooped down into the basement. The old stone steps were so worn from more than two centuries of footsteps that they were dished out in the middle. As many of the chorus as could crammed into the dark, damp stone basement, with only a few light bulbs and chinks of light shining through the boarded up window wells. Murry gave a short talk about the significance of our being there and then we rehearsed an a capella section from the Libera Me, the last movement of the Requiem.

Our performance space for the Defiant Requiem was a large barn-like stone structure in the center of town that had originally been a riding academy where soldiers learned to fight on horseback. The Nazis used the building as a warehouse and a place where Jewish slave labor worked at a number of tasks. One window of the building was always open so that the pigeons nesting in the rafters could come and go to feed their young. The pigeons were not the least disturbed by all the noise we made; they carried on their normal lives through two rehearsals and the performance. Saturday’s two rehearsals revolved principally around the dovetailing of the sound effects, video clips, readings, and choral/orchestral performance and filming for the movie being made. During the evening’s dress rehearsal a violent thunderstorm struck Terezin with sheets of rain and deafening thunder. A window flew open and the noise was so loud that rehearsal stopped. People in the rehearsal audience reported a ghostly feeling that the original Terezin singers were returning to join in our performance.

After a short night’s rest in Prague, all performers were back in Terezin before noon on Sunday to attend the official Czech memorial service for Terezin, held every year on the third Sunday of May. Senior Czech government officials spoke and short addresses were also given by a Catholic monsignor and a Jewish rabbi. Representatives from more than 20 nations laid wreaths on graves in the memorial cemetery. The headstones in the Jewish part of the cemetery are inscribed with numbers only, no names, and have little stones laid atop them to show that mourners have visited. Part of the cemetery is Christian because not only Jews died at Terezin. Performance of the Defiant Requiem followed the memorial service.

 Jewish and Christian Portions of Memorial Cemetery at Terezin

 Flowers laid during Memorial Ceremony                    Terezin Ghetto Museum

Below: Edgar Krása, Terezin Survivor, hoisted aloft by his son Rafael, left. after the performance. Daniel Krása is at right. (Source: Marv and Elaine Wunderlich)

Several Terezin survivors were present for the performance. Accompanying the musicians were Edgar Krása and his wife, both Terezin survivors and now in their eighties, with their family. Edgar was Rafael Schächter’s "roommate" at Terezin. The Krásas participated in all the concert events, including the Prague at Night dinner cruise on the Moldau the night after the performance. Their two sons, Rafael and Daniel, sang in the bass section of the chorus for the performance and each brother brought along his entire family. Edgar attended the rehearsals, gave radio and television interviews, and was generally the life of the party. Rafael Krása, named for Rafael Schächter, told us he believed he and his brother could give no greater gift to their parents than by singing in the Terezin Requiem. On Monday after the Terezin performance, all the Krásas drove north of Prague to a lake where Mrs. Krása vacationed as a girl in the 1930’s; the family has old home movies of a vacation there. Once Mrs. Krása got to the lake, she experienced pleasant flashback memories to the happy times her family had spent there before the war. This side trip made the whole experience all the more memorable for the Krásas, their children, and grandchildren.

Terezin presented itself as a quiet and picturesque little town where life seemed to go on normally around the musicians as we rehearsed on Saturday and performed on Sunday. It was almost as though we had been flown and bused to a movie location where only we -- the performers and film crew -- were participating in the action. The event was solemn to all of us but ordinary matters kept intruding in our peripheral vision as Terezin inhabitants went about their daily lives. The effect was surreal. Only when we were actually performing the Defiant Requiem within the darkened old riding hall before a spellbound audience did the gravity of the event grip me. Only then did I experience how sacred was this ground and only in my singing of Verdi’s magnificent score could I come to spiritually touch those who performed the same piece more than 65 years ago in conditions I cannot begin to imagine.

The Defiant Requiem Concert Drama

The "Concert Hall" for the Defiant Requiem. (Source: Prague Spring website) 

Sidlin’s work, Defiant Requiem – Verdi at Terezin, is a concert drama based on authentic testimonies of those who passed through the Terezin ghetto, featuring Verdi’s Requiem as a tribute to the legendary performances by Rafael Schächter. The performance, Sidlin told us, was a solemn memorial. Everyone on stage wore all black; no colorful dresses for the soloists, no white shirt with tuxedo for Sidlin or anyone else. The staging was such that the audience was never to applaud. When the audience came in, all performers were on stage, so there was no clapping for the appearance of the first violinist, the soloists, or the conductor. At the appropriate time, the performance simply began.

The Concert Drama

Murray Sidlin speaking during Defiant Requiem – Verdi at Terezin. Part of Tim Sprehe’s balding head can be seen over Sidlin’s right shoulder.(Source: Prague Spring website)

Not only did prisoners perform the Requiem, but after the day's exhausting work their lives included painting and drawing, composing music, writing satirical cabaret, reciting Shakespeare, and attending scholarly and scientific lectures on every topic under the sun -- an environment the Nazis could never have imagined flowering within their concentration camp. Among the few extant pieces of this art are the dozens of children’s drawings and paintings displayed in the Jewish Museum in Prague .

Defiant Requiem dramatizes how Schãchter's performance of the Requiem occasioned sharp controversy with the Jewish Council of Elders in the camp. The Elders feared the performances would bring reprisals from the Nazis. More than that, they decried the performance of the Latin text of the Catholic Mass for the Dead because it might communicate that the prisoners were ashamed to be Jews. Schãchter's constant response was that in the Requiem "we can sing to them what we cannot say to them."

In the Dies irae we will sing to them of the Day of Wrath that is prophesied. How great the trembling will be when the Judge comes, by whose sentence all will be bound. That the trumpets shall summon them before the throne to be accountable and nothing . . . nothing shall remain unavenged! Give us a place among the sheep and not the goats, we shall sing. And let us not burn in eternal fire, we shall sing. When the damned are assigned to the searing flames, call us to the blessed, we shall sing. Bowed down in supplication, I beg you help me in my last hour, if that is what this is, we shall sing. I told the chorus what the council said to me! And I said to them: "There. . . there is the door for those who are afraid or feel that presenting the Verdi is wrong of us. They all stayed. We indeed shall sing.*

Schãchter possessed a warm personality and the ability to inspire people with his art. He was a brilliantly gifted musician and the survivors speak of how he how he drew them into the beauty of Verdi's music. The drama enacts the effect of the Requiem on the prisoners. A survivor is heard to say:

During the Agnus Dei, the performance is backlit with the screen showing the Nazi propaganda film created in the summer of 1943, a film about Nazi benevolence entitled, “The Führer Gives a City to the Jews."  As Sidlin said, "Every frame was a sadistic lie: the food, snacks, medical attention, the clothing, the gentle lifestyle, the close-ups of the healthy, the athletic, the laughing children, even the peaceful gardening. A veritable spa. a vacation paradise." The International Red Cross visited Terezin in June 1944, accompanied by high ranking SS officers and again the Nazis staged a carefully arranged charade about how happy was life in the camp. Although reduced to only 60 singers, Schãchter performed the Requiem for the visitors. The Red Cross failed to see through the Nazi ruse. Adolph Eichmann attended and was heard to say, "Those crazy Jews; singing their own Requiem."

(Source: Prague Spring website)

As Sidlin said of the prisoners of Terezin, "Their desire for culture was indeed a match for their desire for life. For more than three years, Rafi Schächter inspired the Terezin population until his deportation to Auschwitz on October 16, 1944 , from which he did not return. And now, we honor his blessed memory by bringing back to Terezin his beloved Verdi score." 

The Requiem is written to conclude with two pianissimo unison voicings of Libera me (Deliver me). In the Defiant Requiem, the first "Libera me" is sung fortissimo. Then a piercing train whistle sounds the signal for the deportation train. Then, the chorus sings the second "Libera me" sotto voce.The Requiem ends and immediately a solo clarinet sounds and sustains a single note. The clarinet then begins very slowly to play Oseh Shalom from the Jewish mourners’ Kaddish. As the clarinet plays, the chorus begins humming along with the melody. The chorus comes down off the risers, heads bowed, descends from the stage, and walks slowly up the center aisle of the hall. Eyes downcast and still humming the Oseh Shalom, the chorus exits the hall and walks to the Terezin train station about three block away. By chance, the first two men from the chorus to come up the aisle humming the Oseh Shalom were Daniel and Rafael Krása. Mrs. Krása had retained her composure until then, but when she saw her two sons leading the procession to the train she broke down and began crying.

Meanwhile, on stage, the dirgeful melody of Oseh Shalom shifts to a solo violin. The conductor, soloists, and orchestra quietly leave the stage and go out the back of the hall. At the end, only the solo violinist is on stage. There is no applause. The audience leaves in silence.

Walking to the Train siding humming the Oseh Shalom 

Afterthoughts

Very little record remains of the cultural heritage of wartime Terezin. One exception is Viktor Ullman, an important composer and philosopher. He wrote:

Performing the Defiant Requiem at Terezin was the most profound musical experience of my life. My mind kept going to the thousands of people who had passed through these spaces more than 65 years ago; people of all ages and backgrounds, many with vast unrealized talent in so many fields of science, learning, and the arts. This generation of extraordinary human beings was snuffed out through systematic and carefully organized murder. Yet while they were at Terezin, the music kept them going, kept their spirits from yielding to despair, and made them able to keep looking their captors in the eye with pride and dignity. Terezin and the Defiant Requiem are the greatest witness I will ever encounter to the power of music to inspire the human soul.

  Tim Sprehe at Terezin

 Terezin: The End (Source: Prague Spring website)

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