Such dramatic efforts form the subject matter of an unprecedented anthology of the musical activity of Jews in Nazi Germany, from the time that Hitler took power to the deportations that heralded the Holocaust.
Entitled Beyond Recall – A record of Jewish musical life in Nazi Berlin, 1933-1938, the collection traces the tragic destiny of hundreds of Jewish artists, most of whom died in the concentration camps.
The company of Family Bear Records, hitherto specialised in pop and country music, has produced this magnum opus of 11 compact discs comprising 250 items with a total listening time of 14 hours, a DVD and a compendious 516-page book.
Hitler’s propaganda chief Josef Goebbels ordered Jewish leaders to set up their own cultural organisation whose theatre, opera, ballet, cabaret, classical music, jazz, religious chants, Zionist songs, films and children’s shows were permitted to be enjoyed by Jews only.
Initially called the Cultural Federation of German Jews, it was renamed the Jewish Cultural Federation (Juedischer Kulturbund) in 1935, because for the Nazis there could be no German Jews.
The same year Goebbels forbade the Kulturbund to play the works of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven or Wagner, and after 1938, only the work of Jewish authors was permitted material.
This cultural ”ghetto-isation” was accepted by the leaders of the German Jewish community who, fearing the dissolution of their federation, tried to navigate the narrow path between affirmation of a cultural identity and submission to Nazi ideology.
The anti-Nazi German Jewish writer Kurt Tucholsky, who committed suicide in Switzerland in 1935, was scathing in his denunciation of this meek attitude of the official German Jewish cultural leadership.
”They play in theatres isolated like lepers, and I hear them say ‘Now we are going to show you that our theatre is the best’. They hear nothing, they see nothing, they notice nothing,” Tucholsky charged.
This state of affairs continued right up until the Jewish cultural federation was banned just days before the start of implementation of ”the final solution” to the ”Jewish question”.
One of the most poignant destinies revisited — and symbolic of the terrible failure of ”Judeo-German symbiosis” — is that of the singer Dora Gerson. She was married until 1936 to Veit Harlan, one of the film directors most liked by Hitler and Goebbels.
Harlan made the notorious anti-semitic propaganda film ”The Jew Suess.” Gerson was murdered in Auschwitz. Years of research were necessary to track down the wax pressings and discs of the Jewish recording companies of the period, dispersed around the world, from Australia to Colombia, Argentina or the United States and, of course, from Israel.
For the authors of the book, this anthology is ”a sign of the victory of life over death”. – Sapa-AFP