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Forbidden Music Lives Again
April 13, 2001Comments (0) | Add | E-mail this to a friend  For a single weekend in March, music that the Nazis had tried to wipe out forever came gloriously back to life thanks to the work of Benjamin Levy, a senior and Hillel activist at the University of Virginia.
More than 1,000 people from all over the world attended the two-day Music Suppressed by the Third Reich International Conference. Events included lectures and concerts by Holocaust survivors, exiled composers from England, the Hawthorne String Quartet from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a dinner reception featuring swing music banned in Nazi Germany. The great-grandson of composer Richard Wagner came to Charlottesville to discuss his great-grandfather's anti-Semitism and his political and cultural influences on Hitler.
"The fact that somebody is taking an interest [in this music] alone is heartening," Hawthorne Quartet violinist Mark Ludwig told The Chronicle of Higher Education. "The fact that it's somebody still in school is amazing. Benjamin realizes how rich this is in terms of the music and the history."
Benjamin's desire to create the conference was sparked by a CD on "Entartete Musik," or so-called degenerate music, that he purchased at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Putting the conference together enabled him to combine two of his passions: music and Judaism. A music major, Benjamin used the conference as part of his distinguished honors project. But it was far more than an academic exercise: The event took over his life, as he served as concert organizer, promoter and fundraiser. He raised over $40,000 from such sources as Hillel, Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the ADL and The Terezin Chamber Music Foundation.
 The spirit of Theresienstadt infused the conference. It was at this showcase concentration camp that the Nazis brought together some of the finest musicians and artists from across Europe. Music that was banned outside its gates played freely inside. In 1943, three days after an opera performance for a Red Cross inspection team, the performers were sent to Auschwitz. Virtually an entire generation of musicians was killed. This conference, along with a smaller concert series held in 1999, was an attempt by Levy to ensure that this music is kept alive. Levy knew that as his finale concert series at the UVa, he wanted to bring the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation.
"I want to reglorify these composers' careers and give them a chance to shine," Benjamin told The Chronicle of Higher Education. "The chance they never had -- the chance they deserve."
The poignant Saturday evening Gala Concert featured the Hawthorne Quartet and the UVa Opera Workshop, among others. For a finale, the ensemble sang a selection from the Theresienstadt production of the Brundibar children's opera. A survivor of the camp, Ela Weissberger, sang in Czech with the ensemble.
"It was the ultimate way to end the concert," said Levy. "It brought the entire story to life in an emotional and moving way. It brought many of the audience members to tears. It was the emotional response I was trying purvey throughout the entire conference."
The conference exposed UVa students to music they had never heard and enabled them to become involved in a world-class event, said Hillel program director Shelby Apple. Hillel activists helped throughout the weekend in a variety of roles. "It was very professional and well organized," said Apple. "This was a certain type of music that many students had never been exposed to. It touched so many of them. Ben put his heart and soul into it."
"This conference had a scope unlike any other," said Hannah Graham, a senior and the conference staff director of student volunteers. "To combine Gottfrield Wagner, Holocaust survivors, the Quartet -- it was such a gratifying experience. It shows that their music didn't die with them."
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