Expressionistic charcoal drawing of a young man by Arno Nadel

Arno Aaron Nadel was born on October 3, 1878, in Vilna, (Vilnius) Lithuania. In 1890, he went to Konigsberg, Germany, to join the choir and to study liturgical music with Cantor Eduard Birnbaum. In 1895, he left for Berlin to continue his education at the Judische Lehrerbildungsanstalt [Jewish Teacher Training Institute] in Berlin. He graduated in 1900 and stayed in Berlin, where he became an authority on Jewish folk and liturgical music. In 1916, he was appointed Kapellmeister [musical supervisor] of the Berlin Jewish community, as well as the choir director of two synagogues. Nadel was also a composer, poet, playwright, and in 1920, he began painting. In 1923, he received a commission from the Berlin Congregational Community to compile a multi-volume anthology of synagogue music.
The establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933 led to targeted persecution of Jews. Nadel and his wife, Beate, born in 1882, and also an author, decided to send their two daughters, Detta, born in 1920, and her sister, to the United States. Following the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, Nadel was arrested and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, but soon was released. He obtained an exit visa for England, but he decided to stay in Berlin and continue serving the Jewish community. His library, artwork, and papers were entrusted to a neighbor and many were preserved through the war. Beate, age 60 years, was deported and murdered in a concentration camp in 1942. On December 3, 1943, Arno was deported from Berlin to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was killed, age 64 years.

Gerd Shindler was born on March 11, 1912 in Berlin, Germany. His maternal uncle was Arno Nadel, an authority on Jewish folk and religious music and the music director for the Jewish community of Berlin for over thirty years. Following Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933, Jews were the targets of increasingly severe restrictions and persecution. Gerd emigrated to Palestine in 1936 and then to the United States in 1947. His father and all of his aunts and uncles perished in the Holocaust. Gerd married Muriel and passed away, age 86, on August 7, 1998 in Sarasota, Florida.