- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- This is December 28, 1988.
- And I'm talking with Hedda Evans in Denver, Colorado.
- Hedda, when, and where were you born?
- I was born on August the 6th, 1899,
- in Prague, what was then Bohemia.
- And Kaiser Franz Joseph was the emperor.
- How old are you now, Hedda?
- I am 89.
- OK.
- So next year, you'll be 90.
- Next year, I will be 90.
- When I was nine years old, we moved from Prague to Vienna.
- My father, my mother, my eldest brother, my older brother,
- Willy, and my little brother, Paul, and my mother's mother,
- my motherly grandmother.
- We moved to Vienna in 1908.
- I went to school in Vienna.
- I was reared in Vienna.
- My mother tongue was German.
- And I went to middle school.
- And I always had a beautiful voice.
- When I was four years old and we had
- members of the family or friends coming,
- they said, Hedda, stand up and sing something.
- And at the age of four, I already could sing.
- So you knew from the time you were a little girl, then--
- Yes.
- --that you could sing and that you loved singing?
- And then also, my father had a wonderful tenor voice.
- And my mother played the piano wonderful.
- And an uncle of mine had a music store.
- And whenever there came some new music or opera or whatever,
- he brought it over to our house.
- We were in the next room playing.
- So I grew up, more or less, with opera and symphonic music.
- Tell me what you remember about your grandmother.
- Oh, my grandmother-- she was born in Prague.
- There was a Prague ghetto then.
- She lived in the time of the Golem
- and the famous rabbi who had the Golem.
- And she told me that the Jews had
- to be home at a certain hour.
- So she told me all kind of stories.
- And she was born in 1840.
- Did she live with your family?
- Yeah, I remember her since I was a little girl.
- She was a widow, and she had a few children.
- And she always lived with us.
- So she also came with us to Vienna.
- Tell me a little about your parents.
- Oh, my father was a traveling salesman for a big, big firm.
- And my mother, she went to the Prague Conservatory.
- And she gave piano lessons.
- And then, in Vienna, my father had his own business.
- But my mother died when she was 38 of tuberculosis.
- And my father remarried in 1917.
- And there is a son from the second marriage,
- who is Dr. Walter Graab.
- He is a famous lecturer, goes to Hamburg and to Germany.
- He has 17 books published.
- And I haven't seen him since 1950,
- but I will see him in April of next year.
- Oh, my oldest brother, Willy, he died in Auschwitz.
- You say you lost one brother?
- I lost one brother.
- And what other family members?
- And he had a daughter, Rita, that
- was in Terezin with my sister-in-law.
- And she died in Bergen-Belsen three days
- before the Britons came to liberate the camp, on typhoid.
- And then I had some uncles and aunts from my father's side.
- They all died in Auschwitz.
- I only have three cousins that went through Auschwitz
- and made it back.
- Tell me a little more about your childhood, Hedda.
- You mentioned that you moved from Prague to Vienna, right?
- Yes.
- What do you remember during those first nine years?
- In the first nine years in Prague?
- Right.
- Well, I mean, we had a marvelous family life,
- a lot of uncles and aunts.
- My grandfather went to-- she had a son that had a music store.
- He had four children.
- And we went there always to visit.
- And they visited us.
- And I had a very happy, happy childhood until my mother died.
- How old were you when your mother died?
- I was 16.
- And my little brother was 10.
- And then, of course, then the First World War broke out.
- And my oldest brother had to go to the war.
- And he was wounded, but he came back.
- So as a child, you must have had a lot of music in your home?
- Yeah, we always had music in our home.
- Was there a piano?
- Oh, we always had a baby grand in our home.
- Did your family sing?
- My mother had a lovely alto voice.
- And my father had a beautiful tenor voice.
- And my brother, Willy, he could play the piano by ear.
- And he had also a very good voice.
- And when I was 11 years old, one of my uncles got married.
- And we put on a show put together
- from all kind of opera melodies.
- I was in costume.
- And my older brother, Willy, he had on a tuxedo.
- And we played and sang in front of 500 people.
- And then also, in summer, in Vienna,
- when there were [INAUDIBLE] for vacation,
- we all went to the country.
- We all rented a big farmhouse.
- Everybody went there, the whole family, the grandmother
- and the cook.
- And we put on plays.
- We memorized plays in the yard.
- And we had costumes.
- So the theater was always in my blood, more or less.
- So when I was 16, I started to take voice lessons.
- So at first, it was Mendelssohn, and then it
- was Schubert, and Schumann, and Wolf.
- So I could give recitals.
- Then I started to sing opera.
- We had a group there.
- We went in Vienna to different places.
- And we sang from note.
- We didn't act it.
- But I know-- I remember that I sang the witch in Hansel
- and Gretel maybe when I was 19.
- Then I decided I want to be an opera singer.
- But in the meantime, I got a new teacher.
- His name was Tremmelis, I remember.
- Was this in Vienna?
- In Vienna, yeah.
- And he went to some place, to Tegernsee, in Bavaria,
- for vacation.
- And he said, if you want to come also, I will give you lessons
- there, too.
- So I went there.
- And that's when I met my first husband.
- And what age were you then?
- I was 22.
- And we fell in love.
- He lived in Graz.
- I lived in Vienna.
- And he called every day.
- Then he proposed, and we got married.
- But it didn't turn out so well, and I divorced.
- But you kept the last name?
- I had to keep the last name.
- His name was Kernmayr.
- And he was Gentile.
- And I had to become without religion, [GERMAN]..
- A judge married us.
- And then, of course, the moment I was back in Vienna,
- I went back to another teacher.
- Her name was Weiss.
- And she was very famous.
- And so I got my first engagement,
- which was Mahrisch Ostrau.
- And that's how my opera career began.
- That was your very first role?
- That was my very first engagement.
- Let me back up just a little bit.
- And I'd like for you to tell me about your education.
- Where did you go to school?
- Well, I went to school in Vienna,
- the so-called Bürgerschule.
- And then my father told me, I know you want to be a singer,
- but you have to have some background in case the singing
- doesn't turn out so well.
- So I want you to go for two years to the-- what do you call
- it--
- business college, so you have some background in case
- your singing career doesn't work out.
- So I went to the business college for two years.
- And I graduated in 1916.
- And on the day of my graduation, my mother died.
- I remember that.
- Then I got a job in a bank.
- Oh, as a teller?
- No, in the bookkeeping department.
- Oh, bookkeeping.
- Yeah, I had to add columns and columns.
- They didn't have any adding machines, no computers.
- Don't forget, that was in 1917, 1918.
- What kind of currency-- were they using paper money?
- What kind of currency?
- They were kronen.
- Kronen-- crowns.
- Ah.
- How many languages could you speak by the time
- you had finished college?
- Well, I spoke German.
- I spoke pretty well French.
- And--
- And then you learned English?
- I mean, I had some English.
- I had the basic knowledge of English.
- But where I worked, nobody was interested.
- All I did was add columns.
- And then, of course, I made money,
- so I paid for my voice lessons also.
- So you never abandoned that pursuit?
- No.
- You always had voice.
- No, no.
- I sang all along.
- At first, I wanted to be a cabaret singer because I
- was very good in expressing.
- But then I sang at least once a month for a big crowd.
- And then I took real voice lessons.
- And the time went on.
- And after my first marriage, which ended in mishap,
- I went to the stage.
- How long did you work in that bank?
- Maybe five years.
- And you were singing in addition to that?
- Yeah, I was singing all the time.
- I never stopped singing.
- OK.
- Well, then let's start talking about your career.
- You mentioned you wanted to be a cabaret singer.
- Yeah, yeah, sure.
- You know, in Vienna, there were so
- many nightclubs where there were terrific singers,
- nightclub singers.
- I mean, I went at least once a month there.
- I could have done as well as every single one of them.
- But I just wanted to sing.
- Yeah, this Tremmelis, this teacher, Tremmelis,
- when he heard my voice, he said, oh, we
- have a new Brunhilde because I had a terrific range.
- But then I had to have my tonsils taken out,
- and my voice slipped down about a tone.
- I didn't have a high C anymore.
- I had only a B flat.
- So he said, you will be a terrific dramatic mezzo
- soprano.
- And that's what I became.
- And that's what I was singing.
- Now, how old were you at this time?
- 23.
- 23.
- That's when I went to the stage.
- And where?
- Where did you start?
- My first year was in Mahrisch Ostrau, in the German opera.
- They had also a Czech opera in which I signed later, after--
- but I sang in both in Mahrisch Ostrau.
- But that was where the young people began.
- This is a picture of myself when I was young and gorgeous.
- [AUDIO OUT]
- But I always--
- I sang in Czechoslovakia the first few years.
- Then I had the engagement in Trebnitz [PLACE NAME],,
- where they had a terrific opera, a new, big opera house.
- But you had also to appear in operettas.
- And I even had to appear there in plays.
- When you were doing stage productions,
- did you ever travel with a company?
- Oh, yeah.
- This one company, after the season,
- we traveled all around in Czechoslovakia.
- So that was Czechoslovakia.
- And then, of course, I sang in Prague with George
- [PERSONAL NAME],, on a big national Czech holiday,
- which was--
- I don't know, when Masaryk became president
- or when Czechoslovakia became independent.
- I don't know when that was-- in the early '30s.
- Yeah, of course.
- Then I also sang--
- there was a [INAUDIBLE] being put on in Barcelona.
- And I auditioned for that.
- And I was chosen.
- And I sang in Barcelona for six weeks.
- Then we had in Bayreuth, not in the Festspielhaus--
- there is an opera house in Bayreuth
- where I sang the Hoffmann and Der Evangelimann.
- And we went with this tour to Graz, and to Linz, and all
- over Austria.
- So you were quite well-known?
- I was quite well-known.
- And we sang this in the Bayreuth opera house,
- not in the Festspielhaus.
- The Festspielhaus was renovated then.
- And so I sang all over the world,
- actually, till Hitler came.
- And in 1935, I couldn't get an engagement anymore
- because I was Jewish.
- I know I sang for an agent, for Karlsruhe and Dortmund,
- some place in Germany.
- And he told me, gosh, I would love
- to give you a contract right now, but you are Jewish,
- aren't you?
- I said, yes.
- But one thing-- that was in '33, when Hitler came to power.
- No, that was after that.
- That was at '35.
- '35?
- No Jew could go and get an engagement anymore in--
- So they asked you, that they just
- asked you that point blank?
- Yeah, of course.
- Why was somebody with a voice like me--
- I don't know what I sang for him--
- Carmen, I guess.
- I was a very good Carmen.
- And he said, he told himself, why isn't she
- some place in a big opera house?
- And I had no way to go away to England or to America.
- Nobody believed you.
- No, I lived in Czechoslovakia the last few years.
- And nobody ever thought that Hitler will come and take
- Czechoslovakia.
- I mean, he didn't, but he wanted only the people
- that are part German, right?
- So anyhow, in the end, it came out
- that I couldn't get anywhere anymore.
- And I remember I cried my eyes out
- because not to be able to sing on stage anymore
- was worse than death to me.
- How long did you not sing?
- How long did I not sing?
- The thing was that the Jews got together in Prague
- and put on in houses, in private houses.
- There were very rich people there,
- very many rich people there.
- They had terrific houses with pianos.
- So we got together there, and we sang there.
- Now, this is one of my first opera roles,
- Azucena from Il Trovatore, the mother
- of the unlucky lover, Manrico.
- Now, this is Brangaine from Tristan and Isolde,
- being desperate when she sees that she gave Isolde
- the love potion instead of the death potion.
- Now, this here is Dorabella, one of the sisters from the Mozart
- opera, Cosi Fan Tutte.
- Now, here is a photo of the countess in the Tchaikovsky
- opera, Pique Dame, where Gherman threatens her
- with a revolver to find out the secret of the three cards.
- And in the next second or so, she dies of a heart attack.
- Now, this would have been in '35, '36?
- Yeah, '36, '37, '38.
- And even when the Jews had to wear the Star of David,
- even then we got together.
- Of course, it had to be in the afternoon,
- because after 8 o'clock no Jew could be on the street anymore.
- So there was a curfew?
- What other ways did they discriminate against the Jews?
- Well, I mean, you couldn't go in a coffeehouse anymore.
- There were two or three coffeehouses
- where the Jews could go.
- You couldn't live in certain places in Prague anymore.
- I had to move out from a wonderful apartment
- and move in someplace else because the Jews were not
- allowed to live there.
- That was in '39.
- Nobody believed that Hitler will march into Prague.
- First they took away the Sudeten,
- where they were talking German, around the Sudetenland.
- That was in '38.
- And then Hitler marched in on the 15th of March, 1939.
- I never forget it.
- So then you were completely restricted.
- And in 1941, I had already had to go to Terezin.
- The camp was done by the Germans.
- They told themselves we had to have a famous camp where
- the Jews are treated--
- we'll call it ghetto, the ghetto of Terezin.
- They will call it, and they will be self-supporting,
- self-sufficient.
- The Nazis will be on top, but the Jews
- will have a Jewish mayor, a Jewish elder, they called it,
- the Judenalteste.
- And they will have a Jewish police.
- And everything they will do by themselves.
- But on top of him, of course, will be the Nazis.
- So they ended Theresienstadt, Terezin,
- which was built in 1790.
- Yeah, the son of Maria Theresa, Joseph, Kaiser Joseph, he
- built the barracks there.
- It was a garrison.
- It was a fort, Terezin, Theresienstadt.
- My number in the camp was 999.
- There were 1,000 people sent.
- First they had a so-called Aufbau.
- All men, 1,000 men went there to prepare the camp whatever.
- There were already other camps, right?
- Oh, listen, there were camps in Dachau and where else?
- Auschwitz?
- No, Auschwitz wasn't there yet.
- No, in Poland there were Treblinka.
- He already did it to the Jews.
- But he just came into Czechoslovakia.
- We never thought-- we are not Germans.
- We talk Czech.
- I mean, I took lessons there on how
- to talk Czech because German you couldn't talk there.
- After the First World War, in 1918, Czechoslovakia
- became independent.
- And there was no German language there.
- When I grew up there, when I was born there,
- there was German and Czech languages.
- And all the Jews sent their children
- to the German languages because the big Austrian Hungarian
- empire, the main language was German there.
- So where was I?
- Well, the camps were being built. But there weren't any--
- Czechs didn't-- did the Jews think that that would not
- happen there?
- No, nobody said that.
- Hitler cannot be here.
- He's not interested in Czech-speaking.
- Of course, he wanted the whole world.
- You know that.
- And the war was already on in 1939.
- In December of 1941, we all were there, were together
- like cattle in a big, big hall.
- Everybody could take 50 kilos with them.
- So I had a sleeping bag made.
- And you could only take 50 kilos-- that was 100 pounds--
- of your possessions.
- So then we went to a train station.
- And they put people in the train.
- And then you had to drag your-- you
- went a mile or a mile and a half into Theresienstadt.
- And there were these men.
- The powerful men were there greeting you.
- Now, were there families there or any--
- No, there were only 1,000 men by themselves.
- And then they picked--
- I don't know.
- Yeah, there were some couples, married couples.
- But mostly they were singles.
- And I was divorced.
- And I didn't have any children.
- So I was single there.
- And the people there, were they mostly musicians?
- The people there-- all the people that lived
- in Theresienstadt had to empty--
- they got paid to empty the whole place.
- How did you find out that you had go there?
- Did someone come and tell you?
- Yeah, I was baking cookies for Christmas.
- It was maybe 11:30 at night.
- Somebody knocked on the door.
- Somebody came from the Jewish community,
- whatever, Kultusgemeinde--
- I don't know what they call it here--
- and brought me a slip of paper.
- And they said, you have one week.
- That was on the 11th or on the 10th of December.
- You have one week to get prepared to pack yourself up
- and to go to Theresienstadt.
- So did you make that trip with people you knew or--
- No, I mean, there were--
- You just had to report--
- --thousands.
- So you had to report to a certain place.
- And you had to bring all your papers that you had.
- Every ring, every silver, everything that you owned,
- all your papers, and all your things,
- whatever you had on jewels you had
- to bring and give it to them.
- And there were some Nazis sitting there and taking it
- away from you.
- Did they tell you that you would get it back at some point?
- No, you had to-- listen.
- Everybody was so scared.
- I know my brother, he had a big business there,
- my older brother.
- And he was interrogated in the Petschek Palace by the Nazis.
- He never telled us.
- But he was lucky.
- He got away and he wasn't killed then and there.
- But the really rich people, they knew what was going on
- or what is going to come.
- And they all went--
- a lot of people went to South America,
- to Cuba, just to get away.
- But my brother didn't want-- and his wife didn't want to move.
- They were supposed to send their daughter to Palestine.
- Little Jewish children-- there were transports there.
- No, the family cannot be disrupted,
- my sister-in-law said.
- So my brother perished.
- And my niece perished.
- What was I talking--
- yeah, so we went to Theresienstadt.
- And I know that the first night we were in a schoolhouse,
- in a classroom.
- There was some straw on the floor.
- And that's where I spent my first night in Theresienstadt.
- And of course, everybody got a terrible cold
- because you lay on the floor.
- It was December.
- And the people already said, Hitler is already through.
- In a few weeks, we will be home again.
- That was in December 1941.
- And I was there till May 1945.
- And there were so many barracks.
- Their barracks there were like five,
- six story high, high rises, more or less
- because there were only little houses there
- where the people lived.
- We were there maybe--
- I was in the Hamburger kaserne.
- And we were about eight or nine in a room.
- And all you had--
- you see it.
- I am sitting here in my chair.
- That was what you had.
- I had the two suitcases I put on the floor.
- They gave you one mattress, not like here you
- have a mattress that covers the whole bed, right?
- There it's three pieces of mattress in a bed.
- So they gave you one piece like this big.
- And that was your domain.
- Like from here, there your foot is.
- So how much is this?
- I mean, how tall is a man?
- Probably six feet.
- About six feet by--
- I don't know.
- How much is this?
- Maybe three feet?
- Yeah, yeah.
- That was where you lived.
- The men were separate.
- The women were separate.
- I was there four or five days when they
- said we all had to go down.
- And then there were maybe 2,000.
- There were three people who tried to escape.
- So they told us--
- What happened to them?
- I'm going to tell you.
- They said we had all to go march down there some place.
- Well, we marched maybe half a mile.
- And there were three young people hanging--
- hanging-- from the trees.
- They were hanged!
- Because they wanted to escape.
- And they were moving there in the wind.
- Can you imagine?
- But you know, the thing is, it didn't do anything to me.
- The moment I came there I got kind of a mentally--
- what do you call it?
- I froze inside.
- I mean, nothing that happened there
- could hurt me because that was the only way to make it.
- A way to protect yourself, to survive.
- It was kind of a mental [NON-ENGLISH],,
- [NON-ENGLISH] or whatever.
- What do you call it?
- A mental anesthetic that I did.
- Exactly, yeah.
- Because I'm normally there in a bread line.
- And the man died in front of me.
- He slumped down and was dead.
- And I just stepped over him, like nothing happened,
- to get my meal.
- This is only possible because some people
- got crazy there, completely, couldn't take it.
- That is how I protected myself.
- Nothing what I did or what happened around me
- could influence me.
- And that was the only way to make it.
- And then, when I came home, it took me maybe half a year
- to defrost myself because this is the only way you
- could really live through it.
- When did you--
- Yeah, and all you got for a whole week,
- maybe a piece like this, not more than that, bread.
- That was for the whole week.
- And that's all you had to eat-- bread and coffee?
- Bread and coffee, yeah.
- Then the big meal at noon was maybe
- to eat three potatoes with a little gravy and a soup that
- was--
- I don't know what it was-- from nothing.
- And in the evening you got again--
- I don't know what you got--
- hardly enough to eat.
- Did people die of malnutrition?
- Oh, yeah.
- I mean, listen, I will tell you what happened there.
- I don't know what we did there.
- But beginning of April or something,
- somebody came and said, is there anybody that can put up--
- any singer or actor or a musician that
- can put together a performance for the inmates?
- So I said, yeah, I am here.
- I was an opera singer.
- So he said, what is your name?
- I told him.
- So he said, OK, you will be the head of the [GERMAN]..
- That means you will be the head of--
- not amusement-- the free time entertainment.
- I mean, some people became policemen there,
- and the Judenalteste, the mayor or whatever you will call him.
- So people have jobs?
- They had jobs?
- Yeah, they had things to do just to keep--
- somebody had to clean the bathrooms.
- And somebody had to wash the floors.
- And there was kind of a ghetto.
- People had things to do.
- But I don't know what I did.
- I read the book.
- Yeah?
- Like, [PERSONAL NAME] book?
- In his book, he said that you were
- doing such lowly things, such as peeling
- potatoes when they came.
- And in the book, it says that they
- asked you to do this job that you just mentioned.
- Yeah, yeah, because I was the first there that was an opera
- singer or could put together.
- So I behaved myself.
- Somebody recited some poetry.
- Somebody danced.
- And somebody took his accordion along.
- So I said, can you--
- I sang two songs by Dvorák or three.
- And he said, OK, I will accompany you.
- And that was the first thing that got me started.
- So I was the head of the free time entertainment.
- Do you remember who it was who asked you to do that?
- Yeah, the Judenalteste.
- Lederman was his name.
- He was the Judenalteste, or the mayor, more or less.
- And he was a rabbi or whatever.
- And he also had speeches.
- He was very clever.
- But he also went to Auschwitz.
- So we were a self-supporting Jewish ghetto.
- I don't know what you call it.
- Did the Jewish people who were the city officials acting
- as mayor and officials, did they truly
- have control of how things were handled or run?
- Or were the Nazis telling them everything to do?
- No, they said, you do your thing.
- And we could do nothing, then they told them,
- we have to send 1,000 people away to a labor camp in Poland
- or in Germany.
- So they had the Jewish officials--
- So the Jewish officials, you pick the people.
- So maybe because I was the first to do these things
- and I did it maybe for two years, and then all the people
- from Vienna, from Prague, from Hungary came.
- And there were painters, there were conductors,
- there were musicians, there were singers.
- All of a sudden, we could have a whole opera put together.
- As I recall kind of the chronology,
- this actually came under the Nazis in about 1942.
- They made it an official program.
- Is that right?
- Yeah, they wanted to show off how good the Jews had it.
- So this camp was different from the others in that it was
- supposed to look pretty posh.
- To look how good the Jews had it.
- Look, they have an opera!
- Look, they have a concert!
- And one day you could go--
- I had a concert.
- Someplace they had a children's opera.
- I mean, the Jews had it so good.
- And then, the next day, they closed the opera.
- And so many and so many people went to Auschwitz.
- Of course, Theresienstadt was quite like a way station,
- you know For instance, there came
- transports of all the old people, only old people.
- And they all died there.
- And there was not enough room to bury them,
- so they put the corpses one on top of the other,
- four or five that were in the houses or in the barracks,
- in the front of the houses or barracks.
- It was such a stench--
- you have no idea-- because they started to--
- what do you call it--
- to disintegrate or what?
- So these people, they were not burying the dead?
- They were not doing anything?
- No, I mean, there was not enough burial there.
- They couldn't pick up the corpses
- fast enough because all these old people died.
- At one time, there were 40,000 people in this village.
- 40,000?
- Yeah.
- So the old people died there.
- And then they had to build a crematorium there
- because, you know.
- So they did have a crematorium there?
- Only a crematorium, not a gas chamber.
- The gas chamber was in Auschwitz.
- But they built a crematorium in Terezin.
- I was there three and a half years.
- And all the time there were concerts and operas
- and transports coming and transports going.
- And once in a while, there came somebody to inspect.
- So I tell you, they inspected, so they
- opened the coffee house.
- And we had to go there and sit there.
- One guy was playing the fiddle.
- People had to dance.
- They're pretending to drink the coffee.
- But this is just so that it will look good?
- Yeah, they said, look how good the Jews had.
- They sit it the coffee house.
- And then they opened the bank.
- We had our money in Theresienstadt.
- I mean, they printed some money, but they didn't need--
- But you didn't really have money?
- No.
- And then the later transports, they
- didn't leave them their suitcases.
- They arrived, and the suitcases were taken from them.
- Everybody took what they could, the best stuff.
- And then they opened a store with men's clothing,
- with women's clothing.
- And they all-- you could go there and buy something.
- So there was a bank.
- There was a coffee house.
- There's a opera house.
- I mean, they played opera.
- They sang concerts.
- There was a terrific chorus from 150.
- We did the Verdi Requiem there.
- Can you imagine?
- And there were famous singers.
- Everybody that was Jewish and came to Terezin could sing,
- could go into the opera.
- So I don't know how many operas we performed there.
- And usually the first performance
- we had to do for the Nazis.
- I remember I sang Carmen.
- The Nazis with their wives were sitting there.
- Concerts of all kinds.
- So they told them the Jews were having fantastic.
- And the next day, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 went to Auschwitz.
- And then they tore down--
- they emptied the bank, emptied the stores.
- This is after the inspection?
- Yeah, after they inspected.
- And that went on and on.
- When people were transported to Auschwitz,
- they were not told where they were going?
- No, they said, oh, you have to.
- We need some able-bodied--
- for instance, my niece.
- My niece had a lovely voice, too.
- They put on Bastien and Bastienne by Mozart.
- And she sang Bastienne.
- No, I mean, they said, we need a labor camp.
- Did word ever get back to the rest of you, though?
- You know, there were so many that--
- and mail, you could-- once in a great while you got a postcard
- or whatever.
- And one woman once told me, you know,
- this one that went three months ago wrote me,
- we are here and we--
- We need to, I later can.
- Did word ever get back to the rest of you though?
- You know, there are so many that were on the mail.
- You could, once in a great while, you got a postcard
- or whatever.
- And one woman once told me, you know,
- that this one that went three months ago
- wrote me we are here, and we even
- met some family members that were dead 20 years.
- You know?
- So in this way they wanted us to know
- that people that go there are, you know,
- are dead, or most of them, rather.
- Listen.
- My brother came here.
- My brother, my oldest brother went with the last transport.
- He was a major in the reserves in Prague.
- He was a horseman.
- He had a horse, which he rode every day.
- He was terrific, healthy.
- But that didn't make any difference.
- They came out and they said, to the left, to the right,
- to the left, to the right.
- If you were lucky, you went to the left
- and didn't go into the gas chamber.
- If you are unlucky, you went to the right, on the other thing,
- to the gas chamber.
- Was it strictly chance or--
- Chance.
- How did they--
- It must've been chance because my brother was
- in such good health and condition.
- He was only 46.
- Were there other family members?
- Did you have other family members at that camp?
- Oh, yeah.
- I mean there are a lot of--
- in October, November 1944, there was an emptying out of TerezÃn.
- There were 10,000 people then.
- And my uncles, my aunts, my cousins, my niece,
- my-- even she got married.
- He died in Dachau.
- You know some men couldn't make it.
- She lived through it, except that she
- got typhoid in Bergen-Belsen.
- And everybody died except my sister-in-law and the three
- cousins from my mother's side that's
- living in San Francisco and two cousins
- from my father's side that went to live
- in Australia after the war.
- And one brother?
- My brother, Karel, was here already.
- He was living in Vienna.
- And when he's lucky, he got himself out.
- His wife took a post in London as a cook.
- There were six weeks where you could pack a suitcase,
- if it was in Prague, to only go to London.
- That Hitler did.
- Why didn't more people do that?
- I don't know.
- I wanted to do it, and my sister-in-law was kind of--
- I don't know.
- She did want the family together.
- I mean, my brother-- my brother wanted to sell the business
- and go to wherever.
- He had enough money-- to South America.
- My sister-in-law didn't want to.
- So she lived through it, and my brother and his daughter
- and his son-in-law, they all perished.
- You know, then in 1944, about 10,000, 15,000 people,
- they all went to Auschwitz.
- Most of them went into the gas chamber
- because they thought it is guy, Berman.
- He is still singing in Prague.
- And then there is Zadikowa.
- She calls me once in a while.
- There are just a few.
- So you do.
- You still keep in touch with a few.
- Yeah.
- Since the book came out, they all of a sudden, the one that
- lived through it knows about.
- There I am, so they called me and they wrote me.
- But after it was emptied out completely,
- then there was hardly anything.
- I mean, I remember they had to go to a so-called glimmer
- factory.
- You know?
- Where they-- and glimmer was an insulation for ovens
- or for whatever.
- And I had to get up at 4:00 in the morning
- because it started at 6:00.
- But I always had to do--
- I wanted to be clean.
- And every morning I went through the yard.
- There was a faucet, was probably a horse--
- a horse-- what do you call it?
- Like a horse trough?
- Yeah.
- For them to drink water.
- Yeah.
- And it was ice cold, winter and summer.
- And I always had a piece of soap.
- Yeah, I gave voice lessons there.
- They brought me bread.
- And I said I want soap.
- I want soap.
- And I washed myself from head to toe every day.
- And, yeah, I had no idea there were
- these barracks in which they were standing maybe for 100
- years or 50 or 60 years.
- And when all the bedbugs came out, you have no idea.
- There were bedbugs, and then there
- were fleas, so many fleas.
- And it was terrible.
- Did they give you clothes to wear?
- Why?
- I mean, I bought what I had.
- But I brought.
- And then later you could get--
- they took from the people that came after me.
- They took everything.
- And you could get there and said I need a dress.
- There were enough dresses.
- You know, people took their best.
- And I could keep my dresses.
- But the people that came after me couldn't.
- So I got there a dress to put on and sing in it.
- I was there 3 and 1/2 years.
- Oh, there was nothing, nothing.
- Then one day they--
- one day there were two women that came and went
- through your belongings.
- And they found a 20 crown banknote in my belongings,
- so I had to go to the prison there.
- Why?
- Why?
- Because I wasn't supposed to have any money on me.
- So I went to the prison.
- I was there three or four weeks.
- What did they do in the prison?
- How were you treated there?
- You know, it is the door that slams behind me
- could only be opened from the outside,
- and that is a terrible feeling.
- You cannot get out.
- Were you there by yourself?
- No, there were three-- we were four there.
- There were some bunks, just on--
- And I, because I had the $20 on me--
- there was bucket in the middle, and that was where you went.
- You know, there was no toilet there.
- And then the next day, we had to go to the delousing station.
- And then at 9 o'clock in the morning,
- we had to march to the entlausung station.
- There we had to take all our clothes off.
- And there we were all naked and standing around till 6 o'clock
- in the afternoon.
- And they took some lime soap, and they washed us.
- And I don't know. and then they-- we had to be inspected.
- We went back.
- And the next day, a barber came and said
- we have to shear your hair.
- And one came.
- And you know, I had all this lovely hair.
- You can see on the photograph.
- So he took a [INAUDIBLE] over.
- He left me just a little bit in there.
- And otherwise he shaved my whole head of hair off.
- Why did they do that?
- What did they do with the hair?
- I don't know.
- That was [? the order. ?] The Nazis ordered it.
- Because I was in the--
- I was there in the prison.
- Everybody that was in prison had.
- Listen--
- They did that only to the prisoners then?
- Yeah.
- OK.
- Not everyone in the camps.
- No.
- But when you went to Auschwitz, there they shore you complete.
- He left me a little bit here.
- And everything here was shorn off.
- And after I was back, and I applied
- for the Wiedergutmachung, for the pension from Germany
- for people that were in concentration camps, you know.
- I went to a psychiatrist, and he told
- me to shear off the hair of a woman is like a rapist
- because this is the crown.
- Your hair is like the--
- you know?
- But I thought without it, you are nothing or something.
- He said it is like rape.
- And there was this gendarme next to me,
- and I cried, and I cried, and I cried,
- and I could not stop crying.
- I never cried.
- I was frozen.
- But this was such an offense to me, you know?
- And he said don't cry.
- It will grow again.
- Don't cry.
- And he broke down also.
- So for a year or longer, I went around with a turban
- because how can you go?
- After three weeks they released me.
- I didn't have any interrogation, you know?
- And I was sure now when I was in the prison,
- I surely will be in the next transport.
- Then I got scarlet fever there.
- And then I got pneumonia there.
- And then everybody was gone.
- Yeah, and then we had to go into the glimmer factory.
- And they'd do something for insulation.
- The Germans needed it for their ammunition or for whatever.
- So I got up at 4:00 in the morning.
- And I spent eight hour there.
- And you could not talk there.
- The Nazis went up and down the aisles,
- seeing if you are doing your job.
- And then we walked back again under guard.
- And we got a meal.
- And I changed, and I sang a concert for whatever
- Jews were left there.
- And for the officers?
- Yeah.
- Oh, listen.
- One time I was preparing for a concert,
- and there was only two or three pianos in the whole place.
- And I was singing some Schubert or some Brahms.
- And all of a sudden, the mayor came with two Nazi officers.
- And they said, what is he doing here?
- And he said, she is preparing for a concert.
- She's a singer?
- Yeah.
- So he said, OK.
- Sing something for us.
- So I sang--
- I don't know what it was, a Brahms song.
- But I never sang so wonderful in my whole life, like for a--
- A command performance.
- For the two Nazis, to show them what a Jew can do.
- You know?
- Very good.
- Very good, he said.
- Go ahead and went to the--
- those are things that come to my mind.
- So about March or April 1945, there
- were hardly any singers left, except I was there
- and Hammerstein, the bass from the National Opera in Prague.
- And he said we have to put something together.
- Why don't we make a children's opera or something
- because there were a lot of children there
- without their parents there, and often the children were still
- there.
- So we got costumes for them.
- And it was kind of a--
- there were the bees and the birds.
- And they're jumping around on stage.
- And in the background was Hammerstein and I.
- And I and he, we sang some Czech folk songs.
- And there were hardly any musicians left either.
- They all went to Auschwitz in October-November 1944.
- And it was the beginning of April.
- And we got the message that the Red Cross from Switzerland
- will come and visit us, and we should
- put on this children's opera.
- So we were standing there, and we put on this opera.
- And then in the--
- I was in the wings, of course.
- And so was Hammerstein.
- And these people from Switzerland
- came into the wings.
- From there were also the Nazis with them.
- And I wanted to tell him that this is all only pretense.
- And he looked at me and said, I know.
- We know everything.
- We know everything.
- Pretty soon it will be over, he whispered to me.
- And I said, really?
- Maybe the war is going to be at an end.
- But was maybe the end of March or beginning of April.
- And in May, like you know, '45, the war was over.
- So we were waiting for the English or for the Americans
- to liberate us.
- But we had to wait.
- Maybe four or five days we were without anybody.
- All of a sudden, the Nazis burned all the papers
- that they had in TerezÃn.
- And it was like black snow falling from the sky.
- And then they had a train for themselves,
- and they took off, the Nazis.
- And nobody was there.
- We were in limbo maybe for four--
- on the 4th or 5th of May.
- So the inmates were just left at the camp?
- The inmates were left at the camp.
- Yeah.
- Before that happens, they came, the transports, the death
- transport.
- You know, when Hitler knew that it was over,
- so they didn't know what to do with all the people
- that were still in the camps.
- So they put them on trains, and they drove,
- and they drove, and they finished up in TerezÃn,
- in Theresienstadt.
- And we went there, and the train stopped.
- And that was the first time I cried because there were men.
- Half of them were carried out on stretchers
- dead because for eight days, they
- didn't have any food, any water.
- They were just driven around.
- And then they were dropped off in TerezÃn.
- Some of them, you know, they stretched out their hands
- so that whatever we had, a piece of bread, we gave them.
- Then they told us we shouldn't have done it
- because if the body is so starved and emaciated,
- the food, they cannot come to digest the food.
- So most of them died.
- And I saw them all in the striped prison garb.
- That was the first time that I broke down and cried.
- Until then, I was laughing, couldn't even catch me.
- Then the ones that were alive were herded together.
- And they wanted them to go entlausung I mean,
- we didn't have any gas chamber.
- And when they were pushed toward the building,
- they didn't want to go in because they thought
- that it's a gas chamber.
- So the fire department had to come--
- I mean, the Jewish fire department--
- and sprinkle them with the hose, with the-- you
- know so that they went in.
- So they were entlaused.
- And then they were--
- It was May, or beginning of May, so it was warm already.
- So they were put down some place on a meadow.
- And somebody told me, there is a man with the name
- of [NON-ENGLISH].
- He asked if you are still here.
- He would like to see you.
- So I went there on the plaza.
- A cousin by marriage, a cousin of my sister-in-law,
- first cousin, and he went through the whole transport.
- He was sitting around eating grass.
- And he said he made it here.
- He made it through the whole Auschwitz and survived.
- So I went home, and I had some barley.
- So I cooked some barley.
- We put some sugar in there and took it to him.
- And he said that is the first good food
- that I had in eight days.
- So that's when I actually finally broke down and cried.
- And then a few days later, the Russians came and liberated us.
- We had to wait for them.
- But my brother, who was in the Jewish--
- what do you call it-- community center or whatever,
- had a very good friend there, who
- was married to a Gentile woman.
- And the moment they heard that the war is over,
- this woman came and had made out some--
- a big sheet of paper with a lot of stamps on it,
- like they give you a stamp when you enter a country--
- with a lot of stamps.
- And there are Russian soldiers everywhere.
- And she always showed this paper with the many stamps on it.
- And they thought it's an official paper,
- so they let her pass with [INAUDIBLE]..
- She came to TerezÃn and picked me up, and my sister-in-law.
- That's how I spent--
- I got out from Theresienstadt before it was quarantined.
- Because due to the fact that they were so many
- that were on the death march, there
- was an outbreak of typhoid.
- And Theresienstadt was quarantined
- till the end of September.
- Otherwise you would have been there you would have been there
- three or four more months.
- Two or three, four months.
- So then when I drove out from there,
- I couldn't believe that I am free.
- So I went back to Prague.
- And a good friend of mine put me up in her house.
- And so I was at this friend of mine maybe for a week.
- And then I got this apartment.
- They gave it to me.
- And when I walked into the apartment,
- it was full of the most gorgeous pictures.
- These two German women worked for the Nazis there.
- And everything that the Jews left behind,
- they just took and hang it on the walls.
- And there was a big carpet in the middle of the room.
- They had-- and that was covered with me.
- So I covered it, and they are handmade rugs,
- all with swastikas.
- That's where a mother and daughter
- were living there, German, real Germans that
- worked for the Nazis.
- So then I was in this apartment, and I--
- there were seven pupils, voice pupils waiting for me
- because when I left, I had made a terrific turnaround.
- We was engaged at the National Czech Opera there.
- So everybody wanted me to make him a voice.
- And one guy came and said, I want you to make me a high C.
- [LAUGHTER]
- So anyhow, I settled down into this place.
- And I got a piano, a grand piano that I had before.
- So I was there maybe for from 1945 till 1948.
- And then the communists came and took over.
- First, we were supposed to be supported by the Americans
- with the Marshall Plan, but it didn't came to pass.
- And then one day, all of a sudden,
- the communists were there.
- And my friends and my sister-in-law
- waited for her husband, who never came,
- my older brother Willy.
- And we didn't know until maybe many years
- later that he died in Auschwitz.
- So--
- How did you find out what happened to your family?
- To my family?
- Why, there was the Aufbau, it's a German newspaper
- that appears every week or every month in New York.
- And my brother read that I had [INAUDIBLE] my maybe survived
- that concentration camp.
- But nothing about Willy.
- So we really didn't know.
- I only know that the last transport
- was supposed to go to TerezÃn.
- And as it turned out, everybody had become--
- what happened to them?
- And many, many years later, we found out.
- There is a museum in Jerusalem, where
- there are all the names that died, all the Jews.
- And there was a suitcase that had
- a-- a black leather suitcase the name Wilhelm Graab on it.
- And that was the name of my brother.
- And my half brother that lived in Tel Aviv
- sent us a photograph of this.
- So we knew that my brother really was probably
- gassed in Auschwitz.
- And last year, a good friend of mine went to Prague
- and went there Judische Kultusgemeinde.
- And they showed him the two cards, Hedda Graab Kemmayr.
- Went on this day and came back on this day.
- And Wilhelm Graab went on October the 27, and went east.
- That was all.
- So that means he probably went to Auschwitz.
- That's what going east meant?
- Yeah, sure.
- Yeah.
- So that is the history of my family.
- So then I was in Prague and my 25 pupils.
- And I had a concert there with approximately I had a--
- I had a poster there too.
- And they told me, your father lives in Tel Aviv.
- You should go there.
- The communists, as long as you are known,
- you can take your piano with you probably.
- So I did.
- I took my grand piano with me.
- How much later was this?
- That happened in November '48.
- I flew to Tel Aviv.
- And there was my father with--
- his second wife died--
- with his son Vikor.
- And my father had a business there.
- So I was there, and then I sang the concerts,
- as you can see in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem and then Haifa
- and in a kibbutz.
- And then I met a man there that fell so madly in love
- with me because he knew that I have a brother in America.
- So he insisted that we get married.
- So I married him.
- But his name was not Evans.
- His name was Eschkenazy.
- And when we came up-- when we came here to--
- I was there 18 months.
- When I came here to America, we landed in New York.
- And you had to give your passport to the officers there,
- and they call you by name.
- And we are sitting there.
- And when somebody says Jack and Hedda "Ish-kan-e-zai."
- Ishkanezai?
- Oh, that must be us.
- That's how he pronounced Eschkenazy--
- E-E-S-- E-S-H-S--
- Esh-- K-E-N--
- Keen-- A-B-I--
- Eschkenazy.
- So I said, oh, that must be us because nobody got--
- so we finally got there.
- Then I told him, we came here.
- My brother sent me a ticket, the flying--
- the flying ticket I bought myself.
- I sold my grand piano to a kibbutz.
- And for the money, we could fly from Tel Aviv to New York.
- So you and your husband both came to New York.
- Yeah, we came.
- And--
- What year was this?
- That was in 1950, in August 1950.
- And then I-- then we took the train.
- Yeah, in New York, I had two very good friends
- that I knew from Prague.
- They took me out.
- And the first thing I wanted was Coca-Cola.
- I never had a Coca-Cola.
- And then the next day we went on a train to Chicago.
- We had friends in Chicago--
- from New York to Chicago.
- Chicago we were overnight--
- and then to Denver.
- You know, by train, I mean.
- So--
- How did you choose Denver?
- My brother.
- My brother.
- My brother came, so I had--
- when I was in TerezÃn, I didn't know is he alive, is he dead?
- I didn't hear from him.
- We didn't get any mail there.
- How could you get mail?
- You were-- you were completely isolated from everybody.
- And Paul is still in Denver?
- Paul is in Denver.
- Do you see him often?
- Huh?
- Do you see him often?
- Oh, yeah.
- He comes every weekend, reads me my mail and writes my checks.
- And he's a very, very good brother.
- So that's how I came in 1950 to Denver.
- And you've lived in Denver since that time?
- Since that time, yeah.
- I'm 89.
- I don't know why.
- My brain is young, but my parts are giving out.
- And you'll be--
- I will be 90.
- You'll be 90 tomorrow.
- I will be 90 next year.
- Yeah.
- So anyhow, I came to Denver.
- And somebody interviewed me, you know,
- but there is a singer that came from Israel.
- And there on the west side, they had a chorus of maybe--
- I don't know how many people.
- $10 a month it was in 1950.
- So I took the job, you know, and I organized chorus there.
- And we make appearances.
- And then, of course, I couldn't sing.
- Denver didn't have an opera.
- And I knew the assistant conductor of the Metropolitan.
- But who wants a 51-year-old mezzo
- soprano that has been 3 and 1/2 years in a concentration camp?
- You know, I mean they had better, younger singers there.
- So I started to give voice lessons.
- And then my brother, he was a public accountant, asked me
- if I want to come and work for him.
- So I said, yeah, sure.
- So I was married twice, and twice divorced.
- Never had any children.
- No, when my brother and I came here,
- I said nobody can pronounce the name Eschkenazy.
- Look in the phone book and pick a name that starts with E.
- So I looked, and there was Evans.
- And I said, this is easy to pronounce.
- So when I got my citizenship, I asked
- if I can change my name to Evans.
- In 1956 I became an American citizen.
- What about the opera company?
- Yeah.
- So I had to rent a studio downtown.
- So I rented a studio for evenings.
- And I had a few pupils.
- And then somebody called me.
- There was a guy with the name--
- what was his name?
- Lansing, Richard Lansing.
- He did a opera group there.
- And there were five, six, seven people that
- wanted badly to sing again.
- So one called me one day and said,
- would you take over the people of Eric Lansing?
- I said, of course.
- So I got this group together and a few more pupils.
- And we started to put on these performances.
- This was in 1956.
- That was in 1955 or '56.
- And till 1963.
- This is a picture of my Denver opera company
- that I had in Denver from 1956 till 1963.
- There were all my pupils.
- And next to me is my brother, Dr. Paul Graves,
- who always introduced the excerpts or one act or duets
- or whatever we put on.
- Now, tell me what you're doing now.
- I know you're still active,
- And it's not-- I'm doing now.
- I work for my brother.
- Then my brother, when he was 65, sold his business,
- went back to school, like I tell you.
- And at the age of 77, he got his PhD in German.
- He wrote three books, which are all published.
- And my eyes got worse and worse.
- And then by then I got Wiedergutmachung,
- a pension from Germany for the people that
- were in concentration camps.
- You know?
- And I have Social Security, so I don't have to work anymore.
- But I say-- and the pupils all--
- you know, after a time nobody came anymore
- because they wanted to be together and sing opera.
- So I now, what I do here--
- by the last few years, I make afghans.
- I make afghans because I can do this more by touch
- than by sight.
- And my afghans are all over the world.
- One is in Israel.
- One is in Canada.
- One is in Hungary.
- And so I do afghans.
- That's good for the mind, when you do something
- with your hands.
- And in 1981 I was declared legally blind.
- I cannot read anymore.
- So I have the books for the blind.
- I have a tape recorder for the books for the blind on tapes.
- And I listen to books all the time
- because I was an avid reader.
- I had about 300 paperbacks, which I gave away.
- And now I'm also decrepit and blind and bent over.
- But I have a good brain and a very good memory.
- What about theater?
- Are you still involved in the--
- Yeah the reason I came here--
- twice on Wednesday they greet the newcomers.
- So they're driving to the newcomers.
- When I came, they introduced us there.
- So I said I was this and that.
- I was an opera singer in Europe.
- I am a survivor of the Holocaust.
- I literally sang for my life in TerezÃn.
- And now I sold my house, and I'm here.
- And then a woman came and said, listen.
- That is so interesting.
- You were on stage, and there we were, the Allied Players.
- Maybe you want to join them.
- I said, yeah.
- I am ready to do anything except singing because my voice
- I don't have anymore.
- So this is how it is now.
- Now, when I told you that I was honored by the Holocaust--
- Survivors of the Holocaust.
- That was two years ago.
- That was two years ago.
- In 1986.
- 1986, yeah.
- I was 87.
- But I was not as blind as I am now.
- And I am very happy here because I
- don't have to do any cooking or freezing when I'm [INAUDIBLE]..
- In the morning, I make myself a cup of coffee and a toast.
- And at noon I make myself a soup or a salad
- and have a little sandwich.
- And in the evening, I go down-- like living in a luxury hotel,
- I go down and sit down, and I'm being served.
- I want to live here.
- You want to live here?
- So now I'm going away for two and a half months
- to Palm Springs.
- Do you do this every winter?
- Every winter, yeah.
- And then I have a lot of friends that come there every year.
- So it's like old homecoming.
- And I go swimming every day.
- Yeah, I swim.
- And I do my exercises, what they showed me in the rehabilitation
- center in the Rose Hospital.
- And I am just a fighter.
- I am a survivor.
- And I'm not giving in.
- I don't give in.
- Good for you, Hedda.
- Good for me.
- Gosh, I really was something.
- [LAUGHS]
- OK.
- Today's Wednesday, February 21.
- We're in Denver, and I'm delighted to be talking
- with Hedda Graab-Evans after all that
- I read about during the Psychiasis book
- and heard about you from colleagues such as Edith Kraus,
- that you performed together with her in Terezin.
- Oh, are you OK?
- And Hedda, what I would like to do--
- I've heard the interview that was--
- the bit from the video that was done,
- which covers really your whole life.
- It's a wonderful interview.
- But I would like to concentrate today on Terezin,
- and I would like to do it not so much that I
- have a list of 25 questions.
- I would like just to talk freely.
- But let me, before we start, just tell you
- the kinds of things which interest me especially.
- Of course, it would be nice to say something
- about whatever you like, of the transport from Prague,
- and the arrival in Terezin, and your living quarters,
- and the conditions, and then, of course,
- your involvement in the Freizeitgestaltung.
- And then what interests me, which
- I don't believe is really that documented,
- is your interaction with the performers and the performances
- with composers whom you certainly
- knew very well, with the audiences,
- and Theresienstadt works which you perhaps performed
- or maybe were written for you.
- These are questions which will come up very shortly, Terezin
- works which you heard, original works, arrangements
- of Yiddish and Hebrew songs which were done, solo songs
- and for choir, your feeling from those songs written
- in Terezin which you knew about the texts, the texts.
- There were texts by Dr. Adler which were written there.
- There were texts by Holderlin, and Francois Villon,
- and all kinds of other international literature
- which had tremendous meaning to the composers
- and certainly to the audiences if they heard.
- A question which I'm very, very curious
- about is, to what extent, if you know,
- that the Germans were aware of these texts.
- We know that the Germans were very, very angry whenever
- they discovered the drawings of Terezin
- by Leo Ungar and Leo Haas.
- We know one case especially that an SS
- was screaming at the artist.
- He says, how can you draw a picture?
- The picture was of a man crawling over a heap of garbage
- to find a rotten potato.
- He says, no one is hungry in Terezin!
- And we know they paid dearly for that.
- But I don't know and have never read
- if they were aware of the texts of the music.
- Maybe they didn't go so close.
- These are some of the kinds of things.
- Along the way, there's some specific songs
- that I'll ask you about to see if you knew.
- So why don't we begin?
- And just perhaps you'd like to say,
- Hedda, something about from the time--
- it was already after the occupation--
- when you yourself got your notice
- to go to the railroad station in Prague
- and to bring your 50 kilos of belongings
- and to go to Theresienstadt.
- It was shortly-- it was in December,
- beginning of December, and it was maybe 10:30,
- and I baked some cookies for Christmas.
- 1941?
- 1941.
- And there was a knock on the door.
- It was maybe 10:30, 11 o'clock.
- And there were two men, and they said,
- we are from the Jüdische Kultusgemeinde,
- and we bring you a notice that you
- have to go into the transport to Terezin.
- Your number is N999, and you have to go to on this place,
- and you have to bring everything that
- refers to your life like papers, every silver,
- and gold, and everything that you have as jewels,
- and leave it there.
- And then you get another notification
- where you-- and what time you should
- go to the big mess hall in Prague that keeps 1,000 people.
- You had to have a sleeping bag and all together 50 kilo
- of your possessions.
- So then they left.
- And I asked them, why do you come so late?
- It was maybe 11:30 by that time.
- They said, because at night we know that everybody is at home.
- The Jews had a curfew.
- They had to be-- about 8 o'clock in the evening
- they had to be at home.
- So then I went to the appointed place.
- I was foolish enough to bring all my papers,
- and I had my birth certificate, everything
- that referred to me, my divorce certificate,
- and my silver spoons, and my rings.
- And I stood in line maybe two hours,
- and then they came in front of one of the SS
- or whatever they there, and they took the things and said,
- you have to report at 8 o'clock in the morning to the mess hall
- on December the 11.
- And from there, you will go to Terezin.
- So I had maybe a week to get a sleeping bag and some walking
- shoes, and nobody wanted money.
- Said, for the walking shoes, you have a wonderful painting here.
- I want this painting, said the shoemaker.
- So he made me the shoes, and I gave him the painting.
- And then I packed, and then I--
- on the appointed day, my brother, and my sister-in-law,
- a boyfriend of mine--
- they all took me to the mess hall.
- And there we embraced and said goodbye,
- and I went into the mess hall.
- Did you-- excuse me.
- Did you know already about Terezin
- and that people were going?
- Or was this is your first time that you heard of it?
- No, I heard that there was Terezin,
- a ghetto where the Jews will go, and there were 1,000 men--
- they were called the Aufbau--
- when they are first to prepare.
- So that was-- first transport was Aufbau.
- Aufbaukommando.
- The second transport was in, and I had--
- just one short of 1,000, 1,000 people.
- And we were all lying there on our suitcases,
- and I looked down.
- And I thought to myself, it's unbelievable.
- The people are told to do that, and they go like lambs.
- Of course, there were no real toilet facilities.
- They dug some-- like in the army what today--
- latrines.
- And in the morning, we could go on the latrine, all in public,
- more or less, no privacy.
- And then came the SS guys, and there was a Jewish guy.
- I forgot his name.
- He went with the SS, and we were loaded into the trains.
- And we came to Terezin, and from there we had to walk.
- The railway station was maybe 20 minutes to walk.
- With our suitcases we had to walk into Terezin.
- There were all the men already lined up to welcome us,
- so I met so many, like Freilich, the violinist, and--
- Oh, he was already there?
- He went with the Aufbaukommando?
- Yeah, he went with the Aufbaukommando, yeah.
- So we went, and they put us into our camp.
- And then everything was abandoned.
- The whole city was cleared out.
- There was nobody there because that was prepared for the Jews.
- That will be the Jewish ghetto.
- Yes.
- There was no Czech population left?
- I was told that when the first transports came
- there were still some Czechs, and until they left,
- the Jews had to stay into their living quarters even
- for several months.
- Well, when we came there was nobody.
- By December, I can understand it.
- Yeah, by December the whole city was empty.
- So we were put into a schoolhouse,
- into big classrooms, and there was straw on the floor.
- And that's where we spent our first, I'll say--
- first two nights, just on the straw on the floor.
- So I went into my sleeping bag, and then the next day, we--
- they divided--
- men were separate.
- Women were separate.
- Children were separate.
- The men went into the Magdeburger Kaserne.
- The women went into the Hamburger Kaserne,
- and where the children--
- there was so much crying, and the women
- didn't want to let go of the husbands.
- The children were taken away.
- So we went into the Hamburger Kaserne.
- I was there, and we were 10 in one room.
- The room of mine was--
- you see me here in my easy chair?
- Yes.
- So just imagine that you can--
- I put two suitcases down, and that was my room.
- That was--
- That was your space.
- That was my space.
- And then in the morning, due to the fact that it was--
- here it's called barracks, but--
- the kaserne.
- It was about four stories high, and there--
- and I don't know how many rooms there were.
- And they used-- soldier used to be there.
- So we went to the washroom.
- There was absolute no privacy.
- I had a basin there, and you undressed.
- We were women, all women, and there were all men.
- So I lost myself from head to toe.
- And then when we went back to our rooms, when we had to go,
- we got some--
- we had to have a long--
- I don't know what it is called, something to--
- how the soldiers when with a bit of pot for a soup,
- and then part was something for the entree, so-called entree.
- And in the morning, we went into line,
- and we got some brew that was kind of black that they called
- coffee, and of course, everybody had something brought with him.
- I had some cake made, like--
- what do you call it-- like coffee cake that they baked
- for me and gave me a long--
- and bread, some bread.
- And my relatives told me, keep this to yourself.
- Don't give it away.
- But when I saw this man-- they were so--
- so I cut up a whole piece of cake
- and gave everybody when we arrived,
- and they ate it like starved.
- Of course.
- Of course.
- So that was the breakfast.
- Then at noon we went there, and we got some soup--
- I don't know what it was-- and maybe one or two potatoes.
- That was-- then the next day there, they came--
- today is bread day, so we got a piece of bread.
- I don't know how much it was, maybe
- six slices, one slice per day.
- So some people ate it immediately,
- and then they didn't have anything.
- And then in the evening, we got some soup or whatever and maybe
- another one or two potatoes, and that was it.
- And once a week, we got meat, horse meat, a little piece
- of horse meat with some gravy.
- And that was--
- And that's what you had to live on.
- That what we had to live on.
- Yes.
- What was the first work?
- I understood also that people had
- to do the so-called "Hundertschaft" before they
- were assigned a regular job, 100 hours of work,
- and then they were assigned to a regular job.
- Yeah, but I didn't do anything.
- I just was--
- I didn't really work there.
- There was nothing to do.
- I mean, some people were assigned
- to clean up or do the lavatories,
- but shortly after I arrived, there was a Jewish mayor.
- That was-- his name--
- Edelstein.
- Edelstein.
- And he got us together, and he had a talk.
- And he said, we are doing everything else,
- and we will have our own police.
- And we will have our own cleanup.
- And then he said, and where is-- are there
- any people that can perform, or sing, or dance, or recite?
- We want to make something like--
- and I was the only one there that was a singer.
- So I said, I am a former opera singer.
- I even brought some notes with me.
- I think the Biblical Songs by Dvorak
- I had with me and some aria.
- So I said to--
- they said, can you put together a performance?
- I said yes.
- So I said, I need an accompanist.
- Somebody took his-- what do you call it-- accordion--
- Accordion.
- --accordion along.
- So I said, can somebody recite?
- Somebody new some poems, and somebody knew how to dance.
- And so I said, I will do-- he will
- do some music on the accordion, and I will do the singing.
- And that was the first time that we did this.
- In the attic-- in the attic of the Hamburger Kaserne
- we did the first performance.
- And then he said, you are so good at organizing this.
- You will be the head of the Freizeitgestaltung,
- and that was in early 1942.
- And so then he said, that was so wonderful.
- Maybe you should go and do it in the Magdeburger Kaserne
- for the men.
- --for the men.
- And so that's how the Freizeitgestaltung start.
- And then he said, whenever there will come a new singer
- or somebody that has anything to do with art or with a stage
- appearance, you will listen to him or to her.
- And then slowly, more singers came.
- So you were put in charge, in a way, of--
- --of the Freizeit--
- --of the Freizeitgestaltung.
- Yes.
- And then after a while or after more months,
- they came a lot of people like singers.
- Then Schachter came, Rafael Schachter, and then
- Gideon Klein, and then Ada Hecht, and Ada Schwarz,
- all the-- and then they came all the men
- that were in the first chairs in orchestras.
- Then Ancerl came.
- What was his first name?
- Karel.
- Karel--
- Karel Ancerl.
- Karel Ancerl.
- And you-- I assume that you had known these people in Prague
- before the war.
- Yes.
- Now tell me one thing--
- when there were some--
- after it was not permitted for Jewish musicians
- to perform in public in Prague, there
- were these private gatherings.
- Oh, yeah.
- I was on there.
- You were involved in those?
- I was involved in them.
- And then there was--
- once, Viktor Ullmann-- is this is his name?
- Yes.
- He said, we will make an alliance buy Handel,
- and we will do it in Hebrew.
- And we will have a Jewish orchestra.
- And I was in the Elias.
- This was before the-- in Prague?
- Yeah, but in Prague.
- You mean Mendelssohn's?
- Yeah, Mendelssohn.
- Yeah, yeah.
- So I was in there.
- And we had Symphony Hall in Prague,
- and it was completely sold out because--
- of course then there were so many Jewish rich people
- that had--
- so we sang, went to their apartments and sang on the--
- Schachter was already there.
- And we did the Magnificat by--
- --Bach.
- --by Bach, yeah.
- And so-- but we had to be home before 8 o'clock,
- so it was always in the afternoon, around 2:00 or 3:00.
- And then, all of a sudden, there were so many singers
- and musicians in Terezin, so Schachter and Gideon Klein
- more or less took over the Freizeitgestaltung.
- And then we had the--
- he said we should put up an opera together, Schachter said.
- So he said, we will do The Bartered Bride.
- --The Bartered Bride of Smetana.
- Smetana.
- And we'll do it in Czech.
- No, did we-- yeah.
- No, we do it in--
- I think we had to do it--
- I think it was in Czech.
- Yeah, it was in Czech.
- And of course then we had Rigoletto.
- Yeah, first we had-- in concert were the Mozart--
- Marriage of Figaro.
- Marriage of-- Marriage of Figaro.
- And these were all with piano accompaniments, I assume.
- That was-- right.
- The piano was later.
- There was on harmonium.
- What do you call a little--
- Harmonium.
- Yeah, harmonium.
- Yeah.
- On harmonium.
- A Fuss organ.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, Fuss organ.
- That was discovered.
- So it was-- and that was kind of, more or less,
- like an orchestra.
- So we had it with a organ, [GERMAN]..
- And we did-- we also did The Magic Flute, and we did the--
- was it The Marriage of Figaro that we did?
- I think The Countess.
- Now, when did you do the rehearsals?
- You had to--
- Oh!
- Most of the people were working during the day.
- Yeah, but the people that were in the Freizeitgestaltung
- did not do anything but go to rehearsals.
- We rehearse wherever.
- When I came there, he didn't have any--
- I took a pitch pipe along, and I loaned it to Schachter.
- So he-- when he had--
- there were choruses.
- Wherever-- at one time, I lived in a cellar,
- really, next to the coal.
- On the night, the rats were crawling around me.
- And there was a--
- there were room for maybe 50 people.
- So he had the chorus or rehearsing there or--
- Did he did he audition people for the chorus, for example?
- I say that because last week I spoke with a man in Seattle who
- called after our Terezin concert in an article that
- was in the paper, and his name was--
- oh my goodness.
- I've forgotten his name.
- It doesn't matter.
- But he said he and his brother, for example--
- they were young men.
- They auditioned for the opera, and they were not accepted.
- And he laughed, and he said they had very high standards, which
- I know.
- They--
- So I think that--
- They were not accepted?
- This young man and his brother were not accepted.
- I don't know that.
- That was-- I didn't do anything involved--
- You weren't involved in the auditions by that point?
- No, I was only involved in the auditions for soloists.
- I see.
- But the chorus was his baby.
- Everybody wanted to be in the chorus.
- Yes.
- But where was the music?
- Where did they have the notes for these--
- Oh, the Germans said that Theresienstadt
- will be the wonder camp, the paradise camp.
- Paradise ghetto.
- Paradise ghetto because they wanted
- to show off when somebody came from the Red Cross
- or from the--
- from Sweden or from--
- Yes.
- But that was already quite late, in '44.
- Yeah, all--
- You're talking of performances back in '42, still
- quite some time before.
- '42, they were not so many because there was not
- so many singers there.
- We had-- when Schachter was there,
- the soloist, we had The Marriage of Figaro in concert first.
- Then later, they put on The Bartered
- Bride and the Rigoletto, and that was more or less a stage.
- But that was in one of the places
- where there was a little concert part.
- And then later, they opened up the Sokolovna for us.
- On that there was this piano, this grand piano
- without the legs, so I don't know what they did.
- But they put a grand piano.
- By then, we had already two pianos.
- When we did the Verdi Requiem, there were two pianos.
- I understood that some of the so-called "Prominenten"
- were allowed to bring instruments finally
- from Prague, from Berlin.
- Yeah.
- Then they-- yeah, everybody could take.
- Yes.
- The guy with the accordion could take it.
- The idea was to show that there is a fantastic ghetto where
- the Jews walk around freely.
- First, we couldn't walk--
- we never could walk on the sidewalk.
- We had always to walk in the middle.
- Were Germans present to see that you didn't?
- Who forbid it?
- There was the ghetto police, and they
- were under the supervision of the Nazis.
- And whenever we put on a performance,
- we had to put it on first for the Nazis and their wives.
- Oh, Really?
- Yeah.
- Most of the performances were like that?
- Yeah.
- Including recitals and chamber music?
- No.
- Or are you talking of bigger performances?
- Bigger.
- Big productions.
- Like operas.
- I see.
- We had-- I know I sang Carmen, and there was--
- there were about 12 or 15 of the Nazis sitting there.
- And they wanted to listen.
- And then it was allowed for the public.
- Carmen, I understood, was only one performance.
- No.
- Carmen was-- we had all about the Carmen.
- Ada Schwarz sang one performance,
- and then I sang the other one.
- And not too much later, they said
- the SS is going to come and listen to--
- so they started-- at 9 o'clock in the morning
- they had to go there to the Sokolovna, where
- they expected to-- inspect everything in the camp.
- And from 9:00 in the morning, we were--
- the audience had to sit down.
- They were put in their--
- nobody was allowed to leave, and we were there
- on the stage in costume.
- And then at 4:00 in the afternoon
- finally, they said, they are coming, they are coming.
- So we started in the middle of it, you know?
- Yes.
- And then I saw on the gallery there
- were the SS guys coming and watching maybe for half an hour
- or for one hour.
- And then we were allowed to go home.
- It was all make-believe, Potemkin village.
- Of course.
- Of course.
- How did the SS behave in the performance?
- Did they applaud?
- Did they just look silently and go?
- No, no.
- They were sitting there on the gallery, or on the balcony,
- or whatever, and they didn't smile.
- They didn't applaud.
- They're just the audience, of course.
- Yes, of course.
- And then, but-- you know.
- Now, I ask that, Hedda, because Martin Roman who
- had the Ghetto Swingers in 1944 was called, actually,
- to the office of the commandant, Gustav Rahm.
- Yeah?
- And he asked him--
- first of all, he told him how much he appreciated his music
- that he was doing at the cabaret, Karussell,
- they put together on.
- And I had the impression that he personally-- it
- was all fake, of course, but at least he made the impression
- on Martin that he really appreciated,
- he liked the music very much.
- It was really a terrible, terrible lie.
- But I wondered to what extent were
- aware of any kind of appreciation from the Nazis.
- At any time, were they--
- I will tell you.
- I had a concert planned, and I went up there to the place
- where there was a piano.
- And I sang, and I rehearsed for the concert.
- And the door opens, and this Jewish guy
- that was so hand-in-glove with the Nazis
- came in with two or three Nazi.
- And [SPEAKING GERMAN]?
- What does she do, this woman, this Jewess?
- And he said, oh, she has a concert, and she's rehearsing.
- What is she going to sing?
- Let her sing for me.
- So I don't know what I sang, I think something
- by Brahms, some--
- and I tell you I never in my whole life ever
- sang as good as this time when the Nazis were listening.
- And he said very, very good.
- Go ahead.
- Go ahead.
- And they left.
- They appreciated music.
- There were-- it's not like in America
- that they never heard of neither.
- That was-- yes.
- That was already with the piano, of course.
- Yeah.
- Who was playing?
- No, I accompanied myself.
- Oh when, you were practicing, right.
- Yeah, sure.
- I mean I was--
- I coached myself when I was at the opera.
- I never needed a coach.
- So they were appreciative.
- But who-- did someone--
- Edith said that she remembers performing with you.
- Yes.
- She thought Schubert or something.
- Yeah.
- Do you call something about it, about working with Edith Kraus?
- Yeah, sure.
- Yeah.
- Listen, I did so many concerts.
- I was never so busy in my whole life like these three
- and a half years.
- I sang almost every day.
- We sang in courtyards, in attics, in cellars,
- and of course in--
- then later, when we had--
- there were many places where we had--
- where you could-- where you could appear where
- there was room for an audience.
- And what else shall I tell you?
- Did anyone from the audience who perhaps you
- didn't know personally after these performances, as is done
- even today, all over the world-- did they come to you
- to express their appreciation?
- Oh, I'm telling you, I walked on the street,
- and two or three women stopped and said, oh, Hedda,
- you are so wonderful.
- You gave us so much, much more than food.
- You keep our spirits alive.
- Oh, yeah.
- Let me ask you another thing, Hedda.
- Opinions are a little divided.
- There are some survivors who feel
- that the most important thing of this music
- making and the cultural life was it
- gave an opportunity for a few precious hours
- to forget the misery of their surroundings.
- There are others who feel that in some way
- it was a kind of deliberate spiritual resistance.
- How did you feel when you were--
- Spiritual resistance to that?
- Yes.
- Well, a kind of showing that you're dehumanizing us,
- and you're not going to take away our humanity,
- and we're going to show you that we still
- are able to express ourselves, and so on, and so on.
- Yeah, that's what it was.
- Did you have such a feeling?
- Absolute.
- Right, listen, first--
- In other words, beyond just enjoyment as a musician
- doing music, which anyway is always--
- that's what I meant, a feeling of showing them
- that, despite everything you're trying to do to oppress us,
- look what kind of spiritual, cultural activity
- we can still do--
- Yes, yes, sure.
- That was it.
- I tell you one thing-- when I came there, the first day,
- the second day, the third day, they said,
- we all have to gather everybody, and we are
- going to be shown something.
- So we all gathered.
- We were 2,000 people.
- And they took us to the place, and there
- were large, big trees.
- And there were three corpses hanging,
- like improvised gallows, from the trees.
- And then one SS guy came and said,
- that is what happens to you if you try to escape,
- and don't to forget it because three young men tried
- to run away.
- They are caught, and they are hanged.
- That was the first impression.
- And I will tell you one thing--
- if I was--
- I froze mentally because, otherwise, I
- couldn't have made it.
- I really froze mentally.
- Nothing mattered.
- Maybe you heard this already on the audio
- from the interview with the woman
- that I was in the line to go for my evening meal,
- and the men in front of me slumped over and lay dead
- on the floor.
- And I stepped over him and just went on with my business,
- didn't concern me at all.
- So if you wouldn't have mentally frozen,
- you couldn't have made it.
- Of course.
- And of course, the way that I had-- that I sang so much--
- it was marvelous for me, and I literally
- sang there for my life.
- But I don't know why I wasn't sent to Auschwitz.
- That I never will find out.
- Your name never came on the list?
- Never, never ever.
- But I was there also in the prison, in the Terezin prison.
- You mean in the kind of fortress outside?
- Yeah.
- Because-- no, not in-- there was a prison in--
- Oh, within the ghetto.
- --withing the ghetto.
- Because there were there-- two women went around that--
- you had no privacy--
- went through all your belongings.
- And I had a 20-crown bill, and money was forbidden to take.
- And I had a kind of half a letter that I started to write.
- And she found that, and the ghetto police came for me,
- and arrested me, and took me to the prison.
- But I thought that people were allowed to write postcards.
- That-- I don't know when then--
- yeah, but the postcards never were sent.
- No, I started to write a letter--
- I don't know-- to thank somebody for something or whatever.
- But they found these 20 crowns, and so I was put
- into the prison, ghetto prison.
- And that was the most unbelievable thing,
- when the door closed behind you and there
- was nothing to open the door from the inside.
- And there were three other there.
- We had no facilities.
- There was a pot where you had to do your business,
- and in the morning--
- we took turns-- somebody took the pot and emptied it.
- And the gendarmes watched us, and we washed.
- And we went back again, and the door was closed again.
- And one evening, we were--
- it was-- maybe it was in the middle of the night.
- The door opened, and there was a Nazi guy with a revolver
- and said, you Judische sauen--
- that means, you Jewish--
- Sow.
- --sows-- I am going to kill you.
- And-- you know.
- So we just stood there, and then another SS guy
- came and took him away.
- So that was in the prison experience.
- And I was there three weeks, and one day, they said,
- you all have to go to the delousing.
- So they took us at 7:00 in the morning
- and marched us to the delousing, and there we
- had to undress completely and stand naked there.
- And they scrubbed us, and I don't know what they did.
- And then they-- then we had to go through an inspection,
- stark naked, no food, nothing.
- And then we went to go into Entlausung into a little place.
- And there was-- it was dark there, and there was a doctor
- or whatever with a flashlight, looked you up.
- You have to spread your legs, and this, and that.
- And he says, oh, you are Hedda Graab Kernmeier,
- the good singer.
- So then we went back--
- This was a Jewish doctor?
- Yeah, sure.
- That was all-- so then we went back and all day without food,
- from 9:00 in the morning until 6:00 in the afternoon.
- And then they cut off my hair, and that was the--
- they left me just a little bit here
- and cut off my-- the whole hair.
- And that was the first time that I cried.
- And the gendarme came and put his arm around my--
- those are the Czech gendarmes--
- and put my-- arms around my back and said, don't cry, don't cry.
- The hair will grow again.
- So when I-- after I came back and asked
- for the wiedergutmachung--
- I went to a psychiatrist who told him that,
- and he says this amounts to rape.
- If you shear off the hair of a woman, that amounts to rape.
- And that was when I broke down.
- I cried, and I cried.
- And for six months, I had to--
- I had a piece of--
- A bandana.
- A bandanna.
- I wore a turban until the hair grew.
- So what else do you want to know?
- Did you continue to perform during that time?
- Yeah, sure.
- Yes?
- We had The Marriage of Figaro.
- Then they said-- yeah, but then they said, you will have to go
- and confess.
- You will be-- the Nazis--
- there will be kind of a--
- what do you call it--
- a court, like a court.
- They will ask you why you had the 20 crowns
- and what was the meaning of the letter
- that you started to write.
- But it never came to be.
- That's very strange.
- I never was called.
- And then, after three weeks, I was let out, and I came back.
- And then I pronounced was called.
- And whenever you were in prison, you went into the transfer
- automatically.
- So I thought I had to go, but I didn't know where, to the East.
- So nothing happened.
- I think the mayor, who knew me--
- the mayor must have--
- the Jews took out the names, not the Nazis.
- But there was a Jewish legislator, more or less,
- the mayor--
- The Judenrat.
- The Judenrat, yeah.
- So they-- I never was called.
- So I was all prepared to go.
- Nobody [CROSS TALK]
- Do you think that maybe your name wasn't put on the list
- because you were so valuable to them for the performances?
- It must be because as long as the mayor was there,
- it seemed that I was protected because nobody went until
- in 1944, in November, when everybody went, and I didn't.
- Even the mayor went then.
- And at one time, there are so many transports,
- and they were there--
- at the one time, there were 40,000 people
- in Terezin, old people.
- And they dressing.
- I saw--
- Can you tell me--
- let's go back to the music a little bit.
- Can you tell me something that you recall,
- details if possible, of your collaboration
- with other artists, with Edith, with other pianists,
- with other singers?
- Yeah.
- We were always rehearsing.
- Yes.
- Does anything stick in your memory of some rehearsal,
- or some incident, or some preparing of music
- or performing together with some of these people?
- Well, we had the rehearsals all the time, and there were--
- what was his name?
- Was it Haas?
- Pavel Haas.
- Pavel Haas?
- Yes.
- Was it Pavel Haas?
- The composer.
- Composer.
- I sang his songs.
- Which songs did you sing of his?
- I have no-- I cannot remember anymore.
- Wasn't he educated in France?
- Which--
- No, no.
- That was Hans Krasa.
- Hans Krasa, yeah.
- Hans Krasa.
- Hans Krasa.
- Hans Krasa.
- Now, you sang songs which he composed in Terezin,
- or did he perhaps have some songs that he
- had written before the war?
- Because there are songs he wrote in the '20s
- published by Universal-Verlag.
- Perhaps he wrote something.
- That I'm not aware of.
- No, that must have been it.
- Some earlier songs.
- Yeah, some earlier songs.
- Maybe he brought some with him.
- Yeah, some-- it must have been--
- How was he as a person?
- Very, very nice.
- Very nice.
- And then, of course, there was Viktor Ullmann.
- Yes.
- Did you know him in Prague before the war?
- Well, I met him when we had Elias.
- I was in his house.
- He played the cello.
- No, he was a pianist.
- He was a pianist?
- Who played the cello?
- Well, Freddie Mark was one of the cellists in Prague.
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah, he played the piano.
- Did you hear any of Ullmann's music,
- or did you sing any of Ullmann's music in Terezin?
- He wrote many, many songs.
- No, I never did.
- You didn't?
- He wrote three songs on texts of Friedrich Holderin.
- He wrote songs on poems of [GERMAN] of Frank Wedekind.
- He wrote two cycles of works on poems
- by Dr. Adler, Der Mensch und sein Tag.
- And then he also wrote a cycle, a cantata for mezzo soprano
- called Immer inmitten
- I guess that's what I did.
- And perhaps you did those songs, the Immer inmitten.
- I guess I did.
- I could play it for you afterwards.
- The first song was called Immer inmitten,
- and the second was Vor der Ewigkeit.
- Vor der Ewigkeit.
- And the third and fourth we never found,
- and perhaps he didn't write them.
- He may only have written the names on the title.
- Now, he also, in 1944, made three arrangements
- of Yiddish songs.
- Presumably, someone asked him to do it.
- And he called the cycle Brezulinka,
- and the first song was called "Berjoskele."
- The second was "Margarithelech," Keller
- which is very well-known, and the third
- was "Ich bin schejn a Mejdel in die Johren."
- Do you have any recollection of those works?
- No.
- Or did you hear any of his piano?
- For example, Edith Kraus was approached by Ullmann one
- day in 1943.
- He had the manuscript of his 6th Piano Sonata.
- He said, would you play it?
- And she looked, and she said, OK.
- And she put it on an incredible recital,
- playing it between Schumann's Kreisleriana and the Brahms F
- Minor Piano Sonata.
- She did it five times, this recital.
- Yeah, in Terezin.
- Did you hear any of Edith's performances?
- Listen, there was a performance by Edith,
- and there was a performance there, a concert of me,
- and there was--
- I know.
- There were three or four things--
- Every day.
- --going every day.
- That's true.
- I know that.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Did you know of any of the actual music of Gideon Klein?
- Gideon Klein?
- Gideon Klein made an arrangement which he called Wiegenlied.
- It was a well-known Hebrew song called [NON-ENGLISH],,
- "Lay Down, My Son."
- And he wrote it-- also, presumably,
- someone asked him to do it in the same way
- that there was a choir conductor, maybe
- the conductor of the Subak choir,
- which was doing especially Jewish material.
- And Ullmann made some beautiful arrangements of Hebrew
- and Yiddish songs taken from the Judisches Makkabi
- Liederbuch in Berlin from 1930.
- Did you hear any of those choral performances?
- No.
- So perhaps those of you who were so active,
- were so busy with all--
- These things--
- --the things you were doing
- Did you hear any of the concerts of what Ullmann organized,
- the Studio fur Neue Musik?
- There is a program of pieces by Terezin composers.
- Karel Berman wrote a song cycle called Poupata.
- Karel Berman?
- Karel Berman.
- And Gideon Klein wrote a cycle called from poetry
- by Peter Kien, "die Peststadt," which was for alto and piano.
- And I've spoken with one person so far
- who remembers hearing it.
- And that was the young violinist Pavel Kling.
- Pavel Kling, he came, he was very young.
- He was a kind of wunderkind.
- He studied, continued to study with Karel Frohlich.
- Yeah.
- In Terezin?
- In Terezin, yes.
- Were you aware of the rehearsals of Der Kaiser von
- Atlantis, Ullmann's opera, in September of '44?
- No, I had no idea that he made that.
- Really?
- My cousin Analeigh in San Francisco sent me something.
- There they performed it in San Francisco.
- I had no idea that they did this.
- Hmm.
- Everybody was in his own--
- Yes.
- --in his own place.
- I see that.
- I see that.
- Yeah.
- I mean, if there was a piano concerto, I knew the people,
- you know?
- But I may have had a recital somewhere else.
- Do you recall if you personally performed
- any piece written in Terezin?
- I don't think.
- You don't think so.
- Yeah.
- I don't think so.
- It's very interesting, all of these things that you say.
- I suppose it was like on the outside,
- that musicians are incredibly busy
- and really have no time in a way.
- No.
- Like today,
- No.
- It's still that way, very often.
- Those of us involved with our own things [CROSS TALK]
- I had no idea that they had written an opera.
- What about Brundibar?
- Did you ever see a performance of Brundibar?
- I don't think so.
- There was a performance then Hammerstein.
- Yes.
- He was there.
- He came.
- He was Arisch [NON-ENGLISH].
- So he came there pretty late.
- But we had a performance of a children's opera he put on.
- Well, that would have been Brundibar, unless it
- was Fireflies, which was later.
- Fireflies.
- That was already in '45.
- Fireflies.
- Fireflies.
- That's what he put on.
- Yes.
- Because all the singers were then.
- So he said I put on this children's opera
- and you and I may be in the background.
- You will sing two or three Czech folk songs.
- And I will sing.
- And that was when already the Red Cross came.
- That was in, maybe, in March '45 or something.
- Can you tell me something of your recollection
- of Carlo Taube?
- Carlo Taube-- you were involved in a number
- of things which Karas mentions.
- One of them is--
- let me find it here--
- oh, yes.
- On May 3, I think of 1942, there was a performance
- of The Ghetto Lullaby that was in The Ghetto
- Suite of Carlo Taube.
- It was repeated again on June 5.
- There was a celebration of Theodor Herzl.
- And I wonder if you were involved in that.
- Did you know Taube?
- He was a pianist.
- He conducted the Stadtkapelle Orchestra, the Taube orchestra.
- Where?
- In Terezin.
- Oh, the Stadtkapelle.
- Yeah, that was for when the people came to visit.
- Yes.
- Then there was a Stadtkapelle, you know, the paradise.
- Yes, of course.
- Yeah.
- I didn't know him personally.
- And what about the--
- oh, now you also had organized, according to Karas,
- on April 4 of 1942, a Purglitzer Abschiedsprogramm,
- this Purglitzer farewell concert.
- Puglitzer?
- Purglitzer.
- Pulglitzer?
- Purglitzer, Purglitzer Abschiedsprogramm.
- Where did he go?
- Well, I don't know exactly.
- He writes that.
- And there is a question if somehow this
- had to do with the transports from Terezin in April
- going to the camps in Poland.
- There were some 6,000 men who went.
- And somehow he writes--
- When was there?
- April 4, 1942.
- But Karas says that?
- Yes.
- 1942 there was only me there.
- Hm.
- And you don't recall this kind of an Abschiedsprogramm?
- I cannot tell you.
- Yeah, yeah.
- There's another thing that he mentions
- and that is that you did on September 23, also
- '42, you sang the premiere of Frantisek Domazlicky's Strene
- for Alto and Male Vocal Quartet.
- I'm not sure the music actually exists anymore.
- Do you remember it, Hedda?
- In September 1942?
- Mhm.
- I guess so.
- There was nobody there but me.
- I tell you, I sang so much.
- Yes.
- And the other thing, there is a poster of the cabaret of Karl
- Schwenk called Long Live Life, which lists your name
- as one of the performers.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I sang the [INAUDIBLE] lead from [NON-ENGLISH],,
- a terrific cabaret song.
- Yeah, sure.
- This was by Schwenk?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- And was he present?
- He must have been present in the rehearsals
- when you prepared it?
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Did you know Schwenk in Prague before the war?
- No.
- When he was active in the liberated theater in Prague?
- Oh, no.
- I didn't know him.
- You didn't know him.
- Yeah.
- But you got to know him in Terezin?
- In Terezin.
- In Terezin.
- How was he?
- What was he like?
- Why, he was--
- I mean, he had the cabaret, right?
- Yes.
- I don't--
- He made, in I think October '42, the first--
- Karas writes about it-- the first all-male cabaret.
- It was called The Lost Food Ticket.
- Oh, yeah.
- And there was a famous song which I'll play you later
- on a tape in Czech which was--
- it became known as The Terezin March.
- [SINGING] Pum pum pum dee da dum,
- pum pa dum pa pum pa pum, pa da dee da pa da dee da dee da da
- rum.
- And it became so popular that he put it
- in to every other one of the cabarets that he wrote.
- And of course, I know many, many, many people
- who were in Terezin who know this song.
- And probably, maybe, in a bit when you hear it,
- you'll remember it as well.
- Mhm.
- You'll remember it as well.
- Are there any other of the composers
- that you had any personal contact with?
- Siegmund Schul for example?
- Now Siegmund Schul was quite young.
- He died in Terezin.
- He died?
- He died in Terezin itself.
- He didn't even go on a transport.
- He was ill.
- And he wrote a lot of Jewish works.
- And one day, somehow, he got a melody
- written down by David Grunfeld.
- David Grunfeld, yeah, the tenor.
- The tenor.
- And he wrote down a little piece.
- It's a melody from the Hebrew liturgy,
- from the evening prayers.
- I don't know whether he ever sang it.
- It's [SINGING] don da dee da da don da da da
- dee do da dee dee dee da da da da da da dee do.
- And Schul took the melody and made a little fantasy
- for string quartet in the atmosphere of that melody.
- But perhaps that melody was not actually
- performed or sung by him.
- I want to ask you a couple of other songs
- that I'm very curious.
- For example, there was a Moravian-Slovakian song called
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- [SINGING] Tee dee pa pom pom.
- Ta da tee dee dom.
- Ta ta tee dee da dum dee da dee da da rum.
- Pa pum pa dum dum.
- And Klein took that melody and made variations on it
- in the slow movement of his string trio.
- I wonder if that folk song was known to you by chance.
- I don't remember anything.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- I cannot.
- I know.
- It's so many things.
- I am of no great help to you.
- No, no, no, no.
- You are.
- You've said many things that are very, very interesting.
- No, on the contrary, on the contrary.
- But always I like to ask these things.
- There's another thing I want to ask.
- In '44, when Martin Roman came and Kurt Gerron and Martin
- took over The Ghetto Swingers, they played in a Stadtkapelle.
- Sometimes they played in a coffeehouse.
- And they made, at the insistence of Rahm, a real German cabaret.
- It was called "Karussell."
- And the words for some of the songs were by Leo Strauss.
- He wrote [NON-ENGLISH].
- Mhm.
- And also by Manfred Greifenhagen,
- who was a businessman from Berlin.
- I think he had--
- I don't know-- he had a factory there.
- And he was an amateur writer.
- And he wrote one song which--
- I'll play it for you afterwards-- it was [GERMAN]..
- Did you hear any of that music from that cabaret Karussell.
- There went, in August of 1944, they took 2,000 Jews
- and marched them out of town to the [GERMAN]..
- And on the [GERMAN],, you see it in the photos from the film,
- this crowd of Jews is on the grass.
- Then they made kind of a little platform of wood.
- And three singers, Hans Hofer was there
- with a kind of a billboard from street cabaret,
- and two other singers, and a young man
- who might have been called, somebody thought, Adler,
- was playing the piano.
- Did you know about this [GERMAN] of going outside the ghetto?
- It was August 1944.
- It was about two, three kilometers away.
- They had to walk and be there for the day and then walk back.
- And it was filmed as part of the propaganda film.
- You mean in 1944?
- 1944, August.
- Because the filming began, really,
- in June of the propaganda film.
- Of the [INAUDIBLE] film?
- Did you know that there was a film crew and a sound truck
- from Prague going around with cameras
- and filming all kinds of things?
- No.
- No.
- No.
- This confirms many people were not aware of it.
- And many of the Jews who were aware of it
- and saw the cameras, they tried to go away and not
- take part in it because they knew it was a horrible fraud.
- That was in 1944?
- 1944 in June, it was at the time of the visit of the Red Cross.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And they made the film--
- Yeah.
- Oh, you mean when the Red Cross came?
- Yes.
- When there was the Potemkin village?
- When first they had the [NON-ENGLISH]..
- Yeah.
- The [NON-ENGLISH].
- Stadtkapelle, the cafe house.
- That's right.
- And in the cafe was a fiddler.
- And people, I think, there--
- Orlovsky, and people sat there with the dark brew, like,
- they drink coffee.
- And there was dancing there.
- And there was a shop where you could buy clothes on the bank,
- on the Stadtkapelle.
- Yes.
- And Potemkin.
- Yes, yes.
- And people had to dress up.
- Sure.
- Were you in the coffee house ever?
- Yeah, sure.
- I am just telling you we had to sit there.
- And one guy played the fiddle.
- The thing there, it was like a cabaret in the cafe.
- And all day long.
- Do you remember any music that you heard there?
- Music?
- Egon Ledec, the violinist, wrote a piece for string quartet
- called Gavotte.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, in the coffeehouse.
- You maybe heard it?
- Yeah.
- And do you remember hearing a piece for violin and piano
- called "Serenade," very schmaltzy,
- was written by Robert Dauber.
- You certainly knew in Prague of Adolf "Dolfie" Dauber?
- Yeah, sure.
- His son was there in Terezin.
- And he played the piano?
- He was a cellist and a pianist.
- And he wrote a serenade.
- I have copies of postcards he wrote
- in February and May of 1942, actually,
- that he was playing in the Stadtkapelle
- and he was playing in the quartet.
- And he writes to his parents that he's written a serenade
- and maybe he can use it in the coffeehouse.
- And then, in May, it was performed in the coffeehouse.
- Yeah.
- There was so much going on all day long.
- We just had to be there.
- Did you ever hear The Ghetto Swingers playing,
- the jazz band?
- Yeah.
- You did hear them?
- Martin Roman was the conductor.
- There was a young man named Coco Schumann who was the guitarist
- and then he also played the drums.
- Pavel Libensky was the bass player.
- Yes.
- Frantisek Goldschmidt was the guitarist also.
- And they played, as I say, in the coffeehouse.
- Yeah.
- And we have photographs of them on the stage
- of the Stadtkapelle outside.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, sure.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- And they played all of these American arrangements
- and American popular songs.
- Well, there was so much going on at this time, you know.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- How was the end of it all, in '45?
- Tell us about the liberation.
- Right.
- First I have to tell you one thing that nobody ever
- mentioned.
- One day at 4:00 in the morning, we
- were woken up that we have to go out there on a big meadow.
- Everybody had to go there 4:00 in the morning.
- We walked maybe an hour.
- And there we were, standing.
- And then the planes were overhead.
- I don't know which planes there were.
- Was it the Germans or was it the Americans, it was?
- Shortly before all the great transports, it was.
- It must have been in '44.
- Yes.
- So we were standing there, maybe, six, seven, eight hours.
- And I thought, this is the end of us.
- They will throw the bombs on us and we will be gone.
- And I found somebody had to go on the path.
- So we took some something and made, like, a tent so
- that the people could go.
- And this Jewish guy that was so good with the Nazis
- went around.
- What was his name?
- You mentioned him before.
- I forgot.
- I only know when the liberation came
- the Jews said give us this guy.
- And they took him.
- And I don't know what they did.
- They probably killed him.
- Yeah.
- Because he was a traitor, you know.
- So that was a terrible experience.
- And after many, many hours, they took us back.
- Why they took us there, nobody knows.
- But I know that there were a lot of airplanes going overhead.
- We didn't know.
- You want to know about the liberation?
- Yes.
- Who came, the Russians?
- Oh, yeah.
- Oh, we were there--
- in the ghetto, there always were some rumors.
- We called it bunkers.
- There was a rumor that the war is going to end.
- There were three or four days where the Germans burned
- all the papers that they had.
- And they threw them on the ashes, and the wind took it.
- It was like black snow is falling on Terezin.
- That's exactly what Edith said, the same thing.
- The same thing?
- The same?
- Black snow.
- Yeah, black snow.
- Yeah.
- So then we [INAUDIBLE].
- And of course, the last transfer there were 10,000 people in.
- Everybody went.
- And I was sitting there checking off the people that went.
- And every day there was a new transport.
- And I was never in it.
- Yes.
- So there was a Danish transport.
- Buses came.
- When was it?
- It was about the 4th or 5th of May,
- just when the [INAUDIBLE] came.
- And we had to wait for the Russians to liberate us.
- So the Germans went away.
- They had a train for themselves.
- And they moved out.
- And for two or three days there, there was nobody there,
- you know.
- And then the Russian came.
- And oh, but shortly before, there
- were these trains that came.
- When the war came to an end, the Germans
- put all the people from the concentration camps on trains
- and lead them around.
- And they drove and drove.
- And they came to Terezin.
- And that was the first time I really broke down.
- There emaciated people in the trains for days and nights
- without water, without food.
- And they came all into Terezin.
- And we went there and greeted them.
- And then they had to go into the enclosing, or into the showers.
- Yes.
- And they didn't want to go.
- Because they thought that they are going in a gas chamber.
- Of course.
- So the Jewish [NON-ENGLISH],, fire, what do you call it?
- [NON-ENGLISH]?
- Firefighters?
- Fire brigade, fire brigade.
- Fire brigade came out and put on the water hoses
- and sprayed them.
- So that they finally--
- it was a riot.
- They just didn't want to go.
- So they went into the showers.
- And then David Grunfeld was among them
- that they were on the [INAUDIBLE]..
- And the trains came with all these people.
- And I was standing there and crying and crying and crying,
- what Hitler did to the Jews.
- That there were the survivors.
- One after the people gave him some food
- that had not eaten anything, they died immediately.
- And that was on the Russians.
- Then the Russians came to liberate us.
- And my sister-in-law and I, my brother were--
- very good friend in Prague, in the Jewish Kultusgemeinde.
- He was arisch [NON-ENGLISH].
- And his wife came with a truck.
- And I packed and I went away with my sister-in-law.
- What is-- you say arisch [NON-ENGLISH]??
- Arisch, he was Jewish and she was Gentile.
- Oh, I see.
- They were mixed arisch [NON-ENGLISH]..
- The [NON-ENGLISH] mean family.
- Oh.
- You know?
- I see.
- I understand, yeah, a mixed--
- Mixed marriage.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- That was arisch [NON-ENGLISH].
- And they could not go anywhere.
- Yes.
- They couldn't go to Auschwitz.
- Yes.
- So that was the liberation.
- Of course, there in some Russian soldiers went around.
- And I wasn't there really long enough.
- Because everything was put into quarantine
- because typhoid broke out there with all these people
- that were discarded and that came, they died of typhoid.
- What were the circumstances when you left Terezin?
- Did you go straight back to Prague?
- And how did you go?
- Yeah, in the truck.
- In the truck.
- In the truck, yeah.
- Yes.
- And where did you go when you arrived?
- I had a very good friend that invited me to stay
- with her in her apartment.
- Non-Jewish?
- Non-Jewish, yeah.
- She got a divorce.
- She had a business there.
- She was married to a lovely Jew, had two children.
- And these children were also arisch [NON-ENGLISH]..
- So they made it.
- Yes.
- And he died, of course.
- What was her reaction when you came back?
- When I came back, she was very much delighted.
- And they were-- is a apartment on the fourth floor where
- that has just been emptied by some two German women who
- was there with the Gestapo.
- Go and ask for an apartment.
- So of course, I came back.
- And I had to go through, as a prisoner of war,
- I had to announce myself that I made it.
- And then I had to then go through a very intense
- medical examination, if I am not this or if I am not that.
- And then I went to a place where they gave apartments
- to the people that were in [NON-ENGLISH],, they call it.
- [NON-ENGLISH]---- no, what do you call it?
- Released prisoner.
- Yeah.
- And so I went there.
- And they're all Czechs, you know.
- And so I told him I need an apartment.
- And that I have a niece that is going to come and live with me.
- So I have to have a living room, bedroom.
- Large enough.
- A large enough apartment.
- Mhm.
- And I also told him that there is an apartment in this place.
- So he wrote it down.
- And I wanted to give him a cigarette
- and he refused to take it.
- So I thought maybe I don't get the apartment because I wanted
- to bribe him with a cigarette.
- You know, cigarettes were like gold then.
- Of course.
- But so I got this apartment.
- And then I got a letter from my brother who was in America.
- And he read in the Aufbau, that is a Jewish paper that comes
- in New York that I survived it.
- Mhm.
- So he sent me $20.
- And I told don't send me $20.
- I cannot buy anything.
- All the shelves in the--
- Stores.
- --stores are empty.
- First there were the Nazis.
- Then there came the Russians.
- They were not much better than the Nazis.
- So there was nothing to be had.
- But I moved into a beautiful apartment.
- And there were rugs.
- And they were covered with linen.
- And I took off the linen.
- And there were the rugs were their hands made all swastikas.
- So these two women that lived there were put on trains
- and sent to Germany.
- Hm.
- And that's how I came back there.
- Of course, did you make an effort
- to go back to your own apartment in Prague?
- No.
- First of all, before I left, I had to move into a neighborhood
- where Jews were allowed to live.
- Ah.
- So there was nothing left of yours.
- No, I mean, I walked out.
- I had the piano, a grand piano.
- Whatever I had, I had to leave there.
- And the Nazis took it over.
- Yes.
- I had nothing.
- So I came into an apartment that was full of great paintings.
- You know, they took what the Jews left.
- And the two women worked for the Nazis, for the Gestapo there.
- And so they took what they wanted, I mean, it was.
- And then of course I moved in there.
- And my niece never came because she died in Bergen-Belsen three
- days before the liberation.
- My oldest brother, who went with the last transfer from Prague,
- also died in Auschwitz.
- Mhm.
- And all my aunts and uncles.
- And I am just a so-called survivor.
- Did I tell you enough?
- You told me wonderful things, horrible but wonderful things.
- Let's finish with you went to Israel?
- Yeah.
- Can you tell me something of what you did musically there?
- I understand that you performed.
- You recorded?
- Let me see.
- I have here.
- I get in my bedroom.
- I want to show him.
- [RUSTLING]
- Is there anywhere?
- Yes.
- Well, this was--
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- Czechoslovakia.
- I don't know.
- This has nothing to do.
- List of '33.
- Where did you appear?
- Does your name appear in here, or photograph or what?
- There is some.
- You have to look.
- There is some photograph of--
- Of you?
- All right.
- I will find it.
- OK.
- I'll find it.
- Yeah, here you have a lot of performance photographs.
- Is that from here or From Europe of
- Some are from Europe and some seem to be from here.
- Wait a minute.
- This here?
- That's you.
- We saw that.
- This is [NON-ENGLISH].
- This is the [NON-ENGLISH].
- Oh, The Chronicles of Zemlinsky.
- Yeah.
- Did he conduct?
- Yeah, I was in it.
- Yes?
- That must have been quite an experience to work with him.
- Yes.
- Now this here is--
- That was in the new German theater then?
- Yeah.
- This is in the Samson and Delilah,
- the priest from Delilah.
- What is?
- I can hardly see.
- Oh, this was [NON-ENGLISH].
- I translated the opera.
- Tell me, did you have anything to do
- in the early '20s, in the new German theater,
- with the operettas?
- This opera.
- With operetta-- Der Opernball of Richard Heuberger?
- No.
- I sang in The Mikado.
- Yes.
- I think this is also Oscar [NON-ENGLISH],,
- the director of--
- conductor of-- What is this here?
- Oh, this was when I had my opera group here.
- Here in Denver.
- Here in Denver.
- I'm standing here, conducting.
- What, I don't know.
- I did all kinds of things here.
- But I wanted to show you a--
- Yeah.
- I had for seven years the Denver Opera.
- Right.
- I see here there's a lot of small pictures from that, too.
- Here, this is before the picture from that.
- Mhm.
- No, I wanted to show you--
- but she didn't give this back to me.
- I had a billboard from--
- Yeah, where is all of that stuff?
- Who has that?
- What is this?
- This is something on Delilah.
- Oh, is that the Samson and Delilah?
- Right.
- Well, you know, this woman I gave her--
- Who did you give it to?
- What do you want?
- The newspaper Arutz.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- January, January 2, 1949, on the radio
- there is a broadcast at 6:15 of Handel's Oratorio Yehuda
- Maccabee and a conversation with examples with Menashe Rabina.
- And Hedda says that she was in that performance, which
- was broadcast that day.
- But she did not do any recordings for the video.
- Pinsky?
- Right, he was a stickler, you know.
- Yes.
- But I mean, I think a part, so many times.
- It was all right.
- Were any of these singers Jewish, Hedda?
- No.
- [NON-ENGLISH]?
- No, I was the only Jew.
- The only one.
- You know, when they drove on the train,
- I told you that who was singing [NON-ENGLISH]..
- There.
- [NON-ENGLISH] was-- just a moment.
- I went there and sat down and talked to her.
- And she said I don't want to be in the same--
- Compartment with a Jew?
- --compartment with a Jew.
- Did you tell her to drop dead or something?
- No.
- But that was in 1935.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- So what was--
- Just a minute.
- I'm looking to see [INAUDIBLE].
- [RUSTLING]
- OK.
- Here's--
- Oh, that's what, Marietta is Mazenka?
- Yeah.
- This is--
- That was Horakova?
- Horakova, yeah.
- This is [NON-ENGLISH].
- This is so old now you can hardly see anything there.
- No, you have a lot of these older performance
- pictures from operas.
- These are very important.
- They should all be reproduced.
- Oh.
- All be reproduced.
- Here you have-- oh, so this one.
- Here you have another one.
- I don't know what this is.
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- August 6, 1899, [NON-ENGLISH].
- When you were rehearsing in the new German theater
- for Zemlinsky, Ullmann at that time--
- well, from 1921, for six years, he
- was one of the conducting assistants.
- Where?
- Ullmann in the German?
- In the new German theater.
- The new--
- '21 to '26, he was on Zemlinsky's staff
- of conducting assistants.
- And he sometimes conducted productions.
- He prepared the choir.
- He prepared singers.
- You didn't work with him at that time?
- No.
- No.
- Yeah, Zemlinsky was there.
- Did you want this [INAUDIBLE] to photocopy?
- No, I made a copy of it.
- You're standing with a young man who
- has a suit and a kind of a [INAUDIBLE] around the middle.
- And you have a kind of Tyrolean outfit.
- That's Fidelio.
- Oh, that's Fidelio.
- Oh, yeah.
- Is it?
- That is Fidelio.
- Huh.
- That's Hela.
- No.
- That was the conductor.
- No, it's not Hela.
- What was his name?
- He had a Hungarian name.
- I'm completely senile today.
- He went to America.
- No, that was Fidelio.
- I did Fidelio.
- This is Carmen.
- Oh, this I love.
- This is [INAUDIBLE],, the old countess, and [INAUDIBLE]..
- Yeah.
- He's there with a revolver.
- I'm next to there.
- Right.
- And she--
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Hm.
- --is just before she dies.
- That is the countess from [INAUDIBLE]..
- Mhm.
- You sang Carmen with [INAUDIBLE],, yeah?
- Yes.
- Sure.
- He was your Don José.
- And what is this is [INAUDIBLE].
- This is another from [INAUDIBLE],,
- when she gives her the poison, or after she
- had to give her the poison.
- No, the other way, Hedda.
- Yeah.
- Like this.
- You can't see.
- This one, you look here like an old gypsy.
- Must be [INAUDIBLE] pearls or something on.
- Is there a schmatta around your head?
- This is, yeah, that's what I was--
- this is also some from Delilah.
- Yeah, I know.
- I recognize this.
- And this is Salome.
- This is her Herod.
- Salome in front and I--
- Herodias in the back.
- Mhm.
- And this is in Prague with my piano,
- a private picture when I was--
- Oh, that's [INAUDIBLE] photo.
- That's nice.
- This is here me and the whole group from the--
- This one again.
- Maybe that's what she was looking for.
- Here you have another one, which I think is the last one.
- Oh, yeah.
- This is the one, Hedda.
- Oh!
- This is the one.
- This is the one?
- Yeah, beautiful.
- Yeah!
- Edison Theater.
- Oh, wow.
- You see this is it.
- Yeah.
- Huh.
- January of 1950.
- 1950.
- Yeah.
- The festival had a [INAUDIBLE].
- The operetta of Israel, the first big festival of opera,
- of operetta in Israel.
- You want this?
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- The best singers of opera and operetta.
- And it says Irena Zoltan, [PERSONAL NAME],, Hedda Graab.
- It says in Hedda Graab, [CROSS TALK] and Brno opera.
- You were also in the opera in Brno?
- Oh, yeah.
- And this [INAUDIBLE], Budapest.
- [PERSONAL NAME] Davidoff.
- [PERSONAL NAME] [? Borenstein. ?]
- Max [PERSONAL NAME].
- Where did you find it?
- Hold it up.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Lustig, yeah, he was the accompanist.
- And so ah, they're doing Samson, Samson and Delilah.
- There are these Rigoletto troubadour, the [NON-ENGLISH]..
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- Yeah.
- Pagliacci.
- Yeah.
- We had a big--
- [LOUDLY] Ha ha ha!
- You know what this is?
- Pagliacci is in Hebrew?
- [HEBREW]
- [HEBREW], the clowns.
- Isn't that what it says?
- Yeah.
- I mean, it's funny.
- The clowns.
- Are you a member of the [NON-ENGLISH]??
- [NON-ENGLISH]?
- I'm not.
- I am.
- I hope I'm not.
- I am.
- [LAUGHS]
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Are you [NON-ENGLISH]?
- Yeah, yeah.
- That's a part of the [INAUDIBLE]..
- Yeah.
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- This is [NON-ENGLISH].
- Isn't that something?
- Land of Smiles.
- What is that?
- [INAUDIBLE]
- No, but in Hebrew?
- Oh.
- [HEBREW]
- Yeah.
- The Land of Smiles.
- Strauss.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- It says in the--
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- Yeah, [INAUDIBLE] operetta.
- That's what we went with all around.
- Where is this, in Jerusalem?
- Well, this is--
- Adam Hollander was the impresario.
- This was--
- Where was the Edison Theater?
- [INAUDIBLE] in Jerusalem or in Haifa or in Tel Aviv.
- Wait a minute.
- That doesn't say.
- Maybe it was Tel Aviv.
- I don't know about that theater.
- Like, it says Yom [NON-ENGLISH] Thursday.
- [NON-ENGLISH] at 9:00 in the evening.
- And then it's--
- [INAUDIBLE]
- No, it says [NON-ENGLISH]
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- Running exactly.
- Running exactly in English, it's [INAUDIBLE]..
- And down in the bottom, it says in the program, solo and duo
- in Hebrew, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian,
- Bulgarian, and Yugoslav.
- [LAUGHS]
- And so--
- Well, maybe--
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- No, listen.
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- In Tel Aviv, I know.
- Course it was Tel Aviv.
- Why?
- We did it in Tel Aviv, in Haifa, and in Jerusalem.
- Yeah.
- And in Jerusalem, there are such a big place.
- And I had an uncle.
- I sang the [INAUDIBLE] there.
- Oh, yeah.
- And the people applauded, applauded.
- I had to repeat.
- Hedda, who are you in this costume, like a maid's costume?
- That'd be worth--
- Oh, that is Evangelimann.
- Oh, yeah.
- Evangelimann by Kienzl.
- [INAUDIBLE]?
- [NON-ENGLISH SINGING] [SPEAKING] Yeah.
- And this is my group.
- The [? Denver ?] Pagliacci [INAUDIBLE]----
- Not too--
- --opera theater.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- This would be nice, I think, to reproduce.
- I don't know how.
- Yeah, how can you reproduce?
- We have a place you can do it really cheaply.
- On such a huge one?
- No, yeah.
- [INAUDIBLE]?
- Or we can reduce it or something.
- Yeah.
- It's worth trying for sure.
- We'll take it in and see.
- It's worth trying.
- Because I wrote it.
- Yeah.
- Luisa Miller, you want this?
- Luisa Miller, sure
- Luisa Miller.
- I sang the countess, the mezzo--
- [INAUDIBLE] is it also.
- And this is-- listen, is this something?
- Who is this?
- Can you tell me?
- Am I--
- Who is this?
- [INAUDIBLE] Two ugly women, one really ugly,
- Hedda, one looks like she's wearing a bathing suit
- top and a long gown, a skirt, with a bare midriff.
- She's not in costume.
- This is-- she came out to take a bow.
- She definitely looks like a lesbian.
- And the other is a big, tall blond
- who is wearing a band around her forehead
- and the schmatta in back.
- And she's wearing also a midriff, you know.
- Where did I get that?
- I cannot-- what is this here?
- Can you see this at all?
- See if you can focus.
- This is from Teplice.
- And this is the temples, you know.
- Oh, Samson and--
- Samson and Delilah.
- So do you [INAUDIBLE] see?
- Yeah.
- Can you recognize me there?
- Of course.
- You're right in the center of the picture.
- But I don't know with this one.
- Oh, yeah.
- So you have Samson and Delilah.
- And you had [INAUDIBLE].
- [INAUDIBLE]?
- This one will not come out well.
- It's blurred--
- It's too dark.
- --the original.
- But this one is the same performance
- and it's in better focus.
- A little sharper.
- Yeah.
- But which one is--
- and this is-- that's--
- yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- That's Hedda--
- No.
- --in Prague.
- And who is-- oh, no, wait a moment.
- Who is this, Hedda?
- Yeah.
- That's when I came back from Terezin.
- Can you see how fat I was?
- Yeah.
- How did you get fat in Terezin?
- Because they-- you didn't get any fruit, no vegetables.
- But who's the baby?
- The baby is the little boy of a pupil of mine.
- Uh huh.
- Do you want any of this?
- No.
- You don't want me as fat and ugly.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Yeah.
- What are you going to do?
- You are--
- Listen to it, yeah.
- Which one?
- The one of you with [? Macha, ?] with the pistol?
- Yeah, the Pique Dame.
- I know.
- Pique Dame, that's terrific.
- That's-- I know it.
- That was just before I die.
- And this one which one again?
- Which is that?
- Luisa Miller.
- Oh, Luisa Miller.
- Yeah.
- Luisa Miller.
- And Samson.
- And this was which again?
- The Chinese?
- Yeah, the wet nurse in the [INAUDIBLE]..
- Oh, yeah.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- [INAUDIBLE]
- [INAUDIBLE] circle.
- Why don't you write it down on the back?
- We have to write it down.
- Yeah.
- Sit down on the--
- [INAUDIBLE]
- You want to write it on the back of that?
- I think--
- Yeah, write it on the back.
- Do you have pencil?
- Pencil?
- Yeah, better than pen.
- Is a pencil?
- Yeah, here's a pencil.
- Here is a pencil.
- I don't know if it writes.
- So this is--
- There should be one of these [INAUDIBLE]
- after the war [INAUDIBLE].
- This is wet nurse.
- In the chalk circle.
- Sacrifice.
- By Zemlinsky.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- --into the transport to Terezin.
- Your number is N999, and you have
- to go to this and this place, and you
- have to bring everything that refers
- to your life, like papers, and every silver, and gold, and all
- the-- everything that you have as jewels,
- and leave them there.
- And then you get another notification
- where you-- and what time you should
- go to the big mess hall in Prague that
- keeps a thousand people.
- You have to have a sleeping bag and, all together,
- 50 kilo of your possessions.
- So then they left.
- And they asked-- I asked them, why do you come so late?
- It was maybe 11:30 by that time.
- They said, because at night we know that everybody is at home.
- The Jews had a curfew.
- They had to be-- by 8 o'clock in the evening,
- they had to be at home.
- [NON-ENGLISH]
- [NON-ENGLISH]
- [NON-ENGLISH SINGING]
- --was a genius, but he was also a very generous giver.
- Don't forget that he was 10, 15 years old.
- Everybody idolized him, not only girls.
- I mean he-- first of all, he had a wonderful face.
- There was something about him that was awe-inspiring.
- He was a wonderful pianist, I mean, you know.
- And he was one who you could go and hear when he practiced,
- you know?
- [NON-ENGLISH SINGING] I
- [NON-ENGLISH SINGING]
- Listen, I did so many concerts.
- I was never so busy in my whole life like these three
- and a half years.
- I sang almost every day.
- We sang in courtyards, in attics, in cellars,
- and of course in--
- then later, when we had--
- there are many places where we had--
- where we could-- where you could appear where
- there was room for an audience.
- Oh, I'm telling you, I walked on the street
- and two or three women stopped and said, oh, Hedda,
- you are so wonderful.
- You gave us so much, much more than food.
- You keep our spirits alive.
- Oh, yeah.
- And of course, the reason I had-- that I sang so much--
- it was marvelous for me.
- I literally sang there for my life.
- That I never will find out.
- Your name--
There is no transcript available for this track
Overview
- Interviewee
- Hedda Graab-Evans
- Date
-
interview:
1988 December 28-1990 February 20
- Geography
-
creation:
Denver (Colo.)
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Emilie Berendsen Bloch, Benjamin Bloch, and Ariel Bloch
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
6 sound cassettes.
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Personal Name
- Graab-Evans, Hedda.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Emilie Berendsen Bloch, Benjamin Bloch, and Ariel Bloch donated the archive of Professor David Bloch to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2012.
- Funding Note
- The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 09:37:20
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn558980
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Also in Professor David Bloch collection
Archive of Professor David Bloch, musicologist, founder and director of the Terezin Music Memorial Project, and Israeli institute devoted to the documentation and study of music and music making at the Theresienstadt concentration camp in the former Czechoslovakia and at other localities under German occupation during the Second World War.
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Oral History
Oral history interview with Uri Bas and Kobi Luria
Oral History
Uri Bas discusses his musical family; the beginning of the war; being sent to the Terezin ghetto on one of the first transports when he was 13 years old; playing the violin and even continuing music lessons in the ghetto, especially harmony; hearing the music in Terezin played in different venues; a song that stayed with him over the years which is a ballad about a pirate [he sings some of it in Czech and reads his translation in Hebrew]; the music in evenings in the ghetto beginning at the end of 1942 to 1943 and which was dedicated to performances and musical entertainment, including cabaret evenings; and being sent to Auschwitz in the fall of 1944, when he was 16 years old.