- OK.
- We'll pick up where we--
- yeah.
- So let's see.
- Where were we?
- Today is June 14, talking to George Hartman about Terezin,
- especially, in Seattle.
- Tell me a little bit about your background, the family,
- where you came from.
- Did you live in Prague?
- Yes.
- I was born in Prague in 1925, son of Dr. Karel Hartman, who
- was a lawyer and was very active in the social life,
- felt very strongly Czech and was active in--
- he sang, actually, for the last years--
- well, before, he played hockey and so on and then,
- when he was about 45, started learning music,
- took lessons from quite famous musician named Bavra,
- B-A-V-R-A, and got very, very good,
- and sang in the second-best opera in Prague called Urania,
- which does not exist today.
- I looked for it when I went there this summer.
- And my mother was also from Czechoslovakia,
- but she was kind of a housewife.
- It's the European echelon.
- And very happy life until '39, when the Nazis came,
- and then '44--
- no, in 1942, when--
- was it '42?
- Yeah, '42, in July, we were deported to Theresienstadt.
- And there, because it was a model ghetto for the Swiss Red
- Cross, they made an effort to engage a number of activities,
- so my father was, along with my mother and my brother--
- all were employed in a painting factory that
- was fabricating kitsch, and it was
- typical mass-produced pictures that were sold.
- So it wasn't too bad.
- And there was a man who also made a very famous film
- about Terezin.
- I forgot his name.
- He was also working in a factory.
- A film after the war?
- Yeah.
- It was a film--
- well, it was about him.
- There's the writer, Arnost Lustig.
- This was about a painter, but I saw it.
- It was excellent.
- It was really a strong emotional experience.
- So--
- Back up just for a second.
- Do you remember the circumstances
- that you found you had to go to Terezin?
- Well, my case was a little bit different
- because I don't have--
- I'm Jewish by definition by the Nazis,
- but I didn't know any Jews and had a very strictly
- Czech upbringing, spoke Czech, was born without religion
- and became Catholic because my father sang
- in Catholic churches.
- So in '39, my father went and joined
- the people who were going to fight the Nazis,
- and then there was a capitulation.
- And we had these real fortifications which was nearly
- as good as the Maginot Line into France, came back,
- and kind of step by step-- this was not a sudden thing that
- would have happened--
- it was taking away rights very gradually,
- just like the communists did later on.
- So pretty soon-- he also owned houses.
- They actually made him maintain the houses
- where he had to lose money.
- Well, then we had to wear the star.
- Eventually, that came.
- And then I was not allowed to go to school.
- And so it really was step by step
- that you were losing everything until one
- day you received a notice that you should go to transport.
- They tell you where to gather.
- And because it was such a gradual thing,
- I think the idea of revolution, or revolting, or fighting-- it
- really didn't occur.
- And I wasn't that old.
- I was 17 or 16.
- At the time, we were not really sure what he wanted to do.
- So it was a shocking experience in many respects
- because the friends that my father had were mostly--
- all of them Czech, abandoned him for fear
- that they would be persecuted if they are caught.
- So suddenly, he found out that not only did he
- lose his profession, which was being a lawyer,
- he couldn't sing anymore, but all his friends deserted him.
- And I think that was worse than anything else.
- He suddenly realized he was alone.
- Sort of a failure.
- And then we-- the last few days before the transport,
- I remember we worked on concealing some money,
- carving out shoes, and putting money in it, and all that,
- and you were allowed to have about 50 kilograms each person.
- And that, of course, was all taken the moment
- he marched into the camp.
- They took your shoes, took your luggage, took everything.
- It was kind of--
- you have to ask me a specific question if you want to know
- [CROSS TALK]--
- When you arrived, did you--
- I understood that, at least in the early part,
- the train didn't actually come into Terezin itself.
- People got off and had to walk in.
- We had to walk in.
- I can't remember where train--
- that's right.
- You had to walk quite a distance and carry the luggage, which
- was heavy, yes.
- Were you separated immediately from your parents
- to go to a Kinderheim or something like that?
- No, I don't think so.
- I can't remember, really, how that procedure was.
- I know we were together, and possibly were
- separated during undressing and all that stuff, though.
- And eventually, we met again.
- But then in Terezin itself, we lived
- in barracks that were completely separate from theirs,
- and they were more in kind of a residential thing.
- We were in the barracks.
- "They" meaning the--
- My parents.
- Oh, your parents.
- So you were--
- But they were together.
- Oh, yeah, we were separated.
- Oh, you were together, and the children, of course, were--
- And we were separate, yeah.
- But we could see them.
- Yeah.
- Were there any young people from Prague
- that you knew who were in your group?
- There was one, Ivan Brod, who is a relative of Brod who
- was a friend of Kafka.
- Max, right, yeah.
- And he was in a camp, but then I think
- he stayed there until the end.
- No, he was in concentration camp.
- I'm sorry.
- He was liberated by the Russians.
- And I think that's the only one I knew.
- Then I made some acquaintance with other people there.
- It was an education to me because horror, horror,
- and all it is.
- For the first time in my life, I saw it.
- And you had a kind of schism of the people
- who were pro-Israel, then the Czech
- Jews who really were completely on the opposite side.
- What do you call them?
- Because of being totally assimilated.
- Yeah, they were totally assimilated
- and were thrown into this thing.
- And then you had a lot of people who
- felt very strongly Jewish, and danced,
- and sang, and spoke Yiddish, or Hebrew, or whatever.
- And did you have such a variety of people
- even in your immediate living quarters
- among the young people?
- Yeah, they were all mixed up.
- There were all kinds.
- Did you, by chance, recall--
- in 1942, he was, I think, about 17 years old.
- There was a boy from Prague who was a musician
- whose name was Robert Dauber.
- He played the piano and cello.
- No.
- I don't-- I don't--
- I wasn't really--
- I was working so hard when I wasn't at the camp.
- I was hauling sacks of flour, and there were 200-pound sacks,
- all night--
- I worked every nigh-- and stealing as much as I could
- and giving it to my parents and somebody, stealing dumplings.
- Did you have easy access to go to see your parents?
- Yeah, it was no problem at all, no.
- Within the camp, you were very free.
- You could move anywhere you want.
- I had a bicycle.
- Because I had a--
- I also had-- later on, I had a good job.
- I became a delivery boy for somebody.
- I can't remember.
- And so I had a bicycle, which was not too many,
- and so I could get around.
- But you couldn't get outside anywhere, no.
- Before, when you began and then I
- asked you to go back just from the beginning of it,
- you were talking about this sort of factory
- for doing paintings, this kitsch.
- Right, right.
- You said about selling these pictures.
- Well--
- Selling to whom?
- Selling--
- The Germans for selling it, or the Czechs, or whoever had it.
- Who bought it?
- People, I suppose.
- Withing Terezin?
- No, no, no.
- This was for outside.
- Oh, for export.
- This was for export.
- This was-- they were making flowers, and fruit,
- and buildings, and so on.
- And it was that kind of an art that you
- might find in the street.
- Some street painter would be painting right in front of you,
- and then you buy it.
- And it was well-done, but it was not art.
- It was just production.
- I've seen in one portion of the propaganda film
- there was an exhibit--
- well, it was part of an exhibit.
- I think it was just outside the Magdalene Kaserne.
- In that curved arch entrance, there was like a little glass
- showcase, and one, exactly what you said,
- was just an innocent portrait of a girl.
- The other one was a still life with flowers.
- And of course it's very well-documented,
- and I'm quite familiar-- and you probably are, too--
- of the artists Leo Haas, Otto Unger.
- No, I don't know.
- These are people who, by day, so to speak,
- were occupied in producing such things,
- or doing drafting for building and things in office,
- and, in secret, were doing these really horrendous drawings,
- sometimes paintings or even drawings,
- in pencil, in ink, in charcoal, whatever they had,
- that show vividly the psychological
- and the physical ramifications.
- This film was about this man, the same thing.
- He did these drawings in secret, and then they
- were all discovered and, I think, preserved.
- And this was the--
- Sometimes people actually were willing to give
- a precious piece of bread to get some of the--
- Well, that was true.
- I know that people would--
- I think my mother was making portraits,
- but people would actually die and give the last--
- this was true even in Auschwitz and Buchenwald--
- for art to draw the child or somebody they loved.
- They were willing to give up the food and die for that.
- In order that--
- In order to get that image, which
- was very interesting to me, in the struggle for survival,
- that's some of the most--
- and I saw the other thing, too, that you really gave up
- everybody to survive.
- That was also-- these are both extremes,
- that you had no more friends.
- And everybody-- if you had to let them die, let them
- die so you could survive, but also
- the strength of the feeling that,
- yes, the last little ration you had you
- would give so somebody can draw a picture of the person
- that you love.
- Yes, that I haven't heard.
- It's interesting what you say about people would, perhaps
- even sort of sacrifice.
- Someone was asked in an interview, also a survivor,
- if she ever had thought-- or if people in general in Terezin
- would go up to the Jewish authorities
- and ask that their name be removed
- from the list of the transports.
- And she said-- certainly for herself,
- she was shocked to hear, and she said,
- that would just be like murder.
- She didn't think that people did that.
- She felt-- her memory of those three years
- were that the people acted very kindly to one another,
- and she said that she kept her bread in the little corner
- that she had in her room, and nobody ever stole her bread.
- Oh, there was a lot of theft, a lot.
- Yeah, but from fellow prisoners?
- Yeah, sure.
- Yeah.
- Like I would bring--
- now, I would steal from the kitchen.
- I would go and--
- for instance, when I carried this flour,
- they would make dumplings.
- Those were kind of filled dumplings that they made,
- and you had to take a piece of stick
- and let the vapor out of those dumplings.
- So I had a big apron which was tied,
- and I would take maybe 10 or 15 of these dumplings
- and put them here.
- And I would take sugar.
- So I got once, I think, about 2 or 3 pounds of sugar somehow,
- and I put it under my pillow, and immediately it was stolen.
- I mean it was stolen before I even could turn around.
- And in concentration camps, if you didn't put everything
- under your pillow, your shoes and everything,
- they were stolen in the morning.
- They were gone.
- And that was a matter of survival.
- So no, you couldn't leave anything.
- You had to guard everything because everything was stolen.
- And you couldn't trust anybody.
- You could-- it was a matter of degree.
- In Terezin, it wasn't that bad.
- It was not a matter of life and death.
- You were getting terrible food, but not
- like when you got into the other camps
- when you were not getting food and not
- getting water, horrible stuff.
- You could survive this.
- You couldn't survive.
- You knew--
- In Terezin.
- Yeah, in Terezin, you could go on, probably,
- at that rate for--
- people were dying but a lot longer,
- whereas in the other camps, you knew, unless liberation came,
- that you were doomed.
- You just-- you were losing weight every day.
- You're getting sick, and it's no way.
- So there, if you really still wanted to live,
- then you were going to steal.
- But, you see, people today who--
- even my brother is much more affected
- than I am because it all depends.
- If you consider these events as human nature
- and you start putting all life in retrospective now to say,
- well, this is what the people really are, I'm looking at you,
- but really, this is not what you are.
- It is an act.
- Then you cannot live, and you really can never get rid
- of these memories.
- Or you can say, anybody who is tortured under those conditions
- would not act human.
- It's not to be expected to be friendly or honest because they
- force you to do that.
- And instinctive of survival is very strong.
- That's what I'm saying.
- I said, OK, that happened, but really, anybody, even a saint,
- will not be able to stand the pain or whatever, the threat
- and will break down if he's human.
- So that's the thing.
- Yeah.
- And yet many maintain-- and it's true--
- that in the struggle to survive, it was really culture and even,
- especially, music which was almost a more powerful force
- than hunger or thirst.
- It could be.
- It depends on the--
- Did you experience [CROSS TALK]?
- Well, I experienced it.
- I thought very often about what is
- it that makes you want to survive,
- and I think it depends completely on the person.
- Like if you had been in a camp where music is your life, yes.
- But for me, I'll tell you, honestly, I was a virgin,
- and the number-one thing was sex.
- I said, I cannot die before I find out what that thing is
- above.
- Number two was food, and number three
- was to see my parents again because I lost touch with them.
- They were in Terezin, and I was in Auschwitz.
- So I'm sure these priorities will vary with each person.
- But you are correct.
- It's not food.
- That was not number one.
- It was always number three or number four.
- How long were you actually in Terezin?
- About two years, a little over two years,
- and then one year and the other camps, roughly.
- Were you aware at all of this cultural life?
- Were you aware that music was actually being rehearsed,
- being performed?
- Yeah, I was aware of that.
- Yeah.
- I didn't have time to go to it, but I did audition once.
- And my father sang.
- And this relative of mine, who is about 75,
- I visited in Prague--
- he's the husband of my cousin.
- His name is Sanda, S-A-N-D-A. He sang tenor with my father.
- My father sang baritone.
- Yes.
- In what framework did your father and you cousin sing?
- In what?
- Were they singing in a choir or--
- I think they put on an opera.
- There were opera singers.
- Yeah.
- I know he sang in the choir in Terezin.
- He sang in a choir in-- he sang solo in churches in Prague
- before.
- But in Terezin, it was for opera what he rehearsed.
- I'm not sure which opera it was anymore.
- What was-- so your father's name, of course,
- was Hartman also?
- Yes.
- And his first name?
- Karel, K-A-R-E-L.
- Karel.
- It's very interesting.
- In the-- you know this book by Josef Bor, The Terezin Requiem?
- No.
- Rafael Schachter tried again and again
- to produce The Terezin Requiem in the camp,
- and the first time they gathered a large chorus and orchestra.
- And then the transports took everybody away
- and the soloists.
- Then he tried a second time.
- It was the third or fourth until he finally did it,
- and of course, they did it.
- It was extraordinary.
- They did it, I think, four or five times.
- It must have been wonderful, wonderful music making
- because they had fantastic soloists there,
- among other things.
- And so Josef Bor writes this book which is partly a novel,
- but it's based on the actual circumstances.
- And interesting that you mentioned about your father
- singing in the church because in one of the attempts
- to get towards the final performance,
- a young man came who actually was Jewish but really
- grew up Catholic, and had sung in church,
- and had a beautiful, beautiful tenor voice.
- And he became Schachter's tenor.
- But unfortunately, as it's related in the book--
- it may be quite fictionalized, although it's perhaps based
- in fact--
- there was some SS who had seen him kind of-- he
- was chasing after him for whatever reason.
- And he ran into the rehearsal as it's done in the lyric style,
- and so he was kind of swallowed up with one of the singers.
- And eventually, however, he did get taken.
- Well--
- He disappeared.
- And it's interesting what you say
- because, true or not, in the premier novel,
- there you have a real case--
- Well, my father really became Catholic
- so he could sing in a church.
- I think he wanted to sing in a.
- Church.
- And I guess--
- I don't know-- he could have sung in a synagogue,
- but I guess he never did.
- But my mother said, be sure to take your hat off when you walk
- into the synagogue, but it all reversed.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Yeah.
- So he became Catholic mainly so he could sing,
- and we became Catholic because we
- thought it was kind of stupid for him to become one.
- We had no feeling for religion whatsoever.
- We were all pretty agnostic.
- But I can find out.
- I should really write to my brother and ask him,
- and I'll write to this Sanda in Prague
- to tell me a little more details.
- And I can tell you next time what--
- that opera might not have been performed, for all I know.
- I know they rehearsed for it.
- The first opera performed was The Bartered Bride of Smetana.
- Well, that was not it.
- And they did Tosca.
- They did Rigoletto and Carmen.
- It would have been Tosca, Rigoletto, or one of those, not
- Bartered Bride.
- But I'll find out because this man has a good memory,
- and I was pretty amazed.
- Now, would your father have been one of the soloists?
- Yeah, I think so.
- He would be a soloist.
- He was very good.
- It's possible that his name would
- be on one of the many posters.
- It's possible, yeah, because he had a very good voice.
- He had a very good voice.
- So he would sing a solo.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I don't have all of my literature things
- here, of course, but I can check on a number
- of lists and reproductions of posters that I have.
- And it could very well--
- It could be, yeah.
- It could be.
- Tell me about your-- you said, when
- we spoke earlier on the phone, that you went together
- with your brother.
- And you auditioned to be in the opera.
- Right.
- It was some little room, and there
- was a man who was very professional and very strict.
- I remember he took it absolutely-- a real matter
- of business, not a nice word.
- And then we had to sing, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da,
- and he wanted to see how much our lungs worked and so on.
- And he dismissed me because I didn't
- have enough power or something, but my brother is OK.
- But he didn't sing either.
- I don't know what happened.
- But his voice was better.
- It was a fuller--
- not nasal and so on.
- So--
- Did you know at the time the name of that man?
- No.
- I don't think I even knew then who it was.
- But he was doing the auditioning to see--
- and that would have been probably for a choir.
- I don't think it would have been for a solo.
- It sounds very much like it might
- have been, roughly, Schachter.
- He was about 35.
- Again, I have no idea how old he was, you see.
- The pictures--
- He would've seemed old at the time.
- Yeah.
- The pictures show a man a little bit-- not stout but--
- It's very possible.
- And then there was this magnificent tenor-- and I--
- you mentioned the name.
- Either it was Greenfeld or Roizman some other name--
- who was sent to the coal mines.
- But he survived, apparently.
- I thought he died.
- Was it a tenor was in a lot of the programs named
- David Grünfeld.
- Grünfeld, right.
- Grünfeld.
- He's the one, right.
- He survived.
- He--
- So he sang with my father.
- They sang together.
- And he had a beautiful voice.
- I remember his voice.
- Yeah, I've seen a photograph of him and his name.
- And actually, there's one surviving little piece of music
- by him, not written down by him, but he
- set a sentence or a phrase from a sentence
- in the Jewish evening prayer which, under the circumstances,
- has great meaning because it's kind
- of one of the concluding prayers from the evening service,
- and it's praying to God to be in the shadow of his wings
- and not to--
- really not to be afraid in the presence of Satan.
- Satan in Jewish religion is not so much Satan like a devil with
- horns but rather what's called, he was [NON-ENGLISH]..
- In other words, it's--
- the devil usually has two inclinations, a good one
- and a bad one.
- It's like the good angel and the bad angel.
- One's telling you to do something good,
- and one's saying, ah, do something that's not.
- And normally, in the context of that prayer,
- that reference to Satan would be that evil inclination.
- But it seems very likely that, under the circumstances,
- Satan really referred underhandedly to the Germans.
- So it was a little courageous, actually, to make a tune.
- Now, it doesn't survive written down in his hand.
- What survives is the melody.
- I could play it for you later.
- And I've tried, and eventually I'll
- find a way to fit the words to it so
- that it will be quite singable.
- And then there was another composer, a young composer
- named Zikmund Schul who made a little fantasy
- around the atmosphere of that tune
- for the piece for a string quartet.
- So here we already have the name that I know, David Grünfeld,
- and there's people who I'd like to--
- Schachter that interviewed you.
- Did you go to any performances of opera--
- No, I don't remember that I went to anything, no.
- I don't know why.
- And as I say, maybe it wasn't performed.
- Maybe the same thing happened, as you said,
- that people were sent to--
- but that started earlier.
- That started before in the transport
- was going out of Terezin because those started in 1944.
- And so I don't know.
- But music kind of had a negative influence, too,
- and that is that music was broadcast always
- in these camps.
- And it was as martial music.
- Also in Terezin?
- Well, I don't remember in Terezin
- whether it was broadcast.
- I can't remember.
- But in other camps--
- and news would be broadcast about the Germans
- advancing and all the victories because it
- was very demoralizing.
- Of course.
- And they knew it.
- And the technique was to kind of destroy the people.
- It was mental torture, very subtle.
- And even when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia,
- the same thing would happen.
- They would use music.
- When there was some real tragic news on radio or some program,
- then they would interrupt it, and then this music came,
- this martial tune, just like travesty to the nation.
- And so that was happening in the camp, that is cheerful
- marching, German music would come on after the news,
- and the only reason you could survive
- was to keep your spirit up.
- That was really-- even in Terezin,
- it was pretty bad for older people.
- I was young and healthy, but for older people,
- I think, if you didn't have any hope, you died.
- How much, at your age, as a teenager,
- then were you aware or suspicious
- of what the motives of the Germans really were?
- Well, you hated to think about it.
- You knew that-- we didn't know anything
- about concentration camps.
- I mean I didn't know that.
- Even when I went on the train I didn't.
- But we didn't think that we would ever get out of the camp
- unless the war ended, and it didn't look very hopeful.
- So the hope was artificial.
- And I used to write letters to my brother in Buchenwald
- because he was in a TB hospital--
- but he didn't have TB.
- It was just frozen feet or something--
- and on a piece of toilet paper.
- And I was telling him, don't give up, don't give up.
- And then the message came back somehow,
- trying to prop ourselves up.
- At the same time, we really didn't believe it.
- Well, we wanted to believe it.
- You made yourself believe it.
- It was self-hypnosis.
- But it didn't make much sense because
- until the last few months, the Germans were doing real well,
- and it was only when the things in Russia
- started changing that there was some hope.
- Then we also knew that--
- a rumor was that the whole concentration
- camp was dynamited and that we would never survive anyway,
- but you still hoped.
- We still hoped.
- You never-- and the people who didn't hope--
- I saw that.
- There are some friends, and they would say, well, this is it.
- I don't believe that.
- Obviously would die the next day.
- He would be dead.
- The only thing that was keeping him up alive
- was his hope, and--
- And he lost that.
- The more he lost that hope, the body gave up.
- So it's-- I think if you're young,
- the world is pretty black and white.
- You don't have these nuances and these fears and disappointments
- as when you're middle-aged or old.
- My father was about 55, and that's--
- your life has been lived, and it's not--
- everything is not so pure, so I think you give up easy.
- You don't have that much to look forward to.
- So did your parents survive?
- Or did they stay in Terezin until the end?
- They stayed in Terezin, and then they were deported to Auschwitz
- and died in the gas chambers.
- I'm not sure exactly when, but it was sometimes in 1944.
- In '44.
- Were you still there in June of '44 when the visit of the Red
- Cross was and there was a--
- I think I was--
- I think I left in July.
- Do remember about all of this [NON-ENGLISH] that was going
- on, this [CROSS TALK]
- Vaguely.
- Yeah, vaguely.
- Yeah.
- I--
- Did you have any memory of seeing
- the film crew which was--
- No.
- --I think in June '44?
- No, I really don't remember that.
- That's also interesting because I
- know a lot of survivors who heard about it
- but for whatever reason weren't actually
- in the place where-- they saw there was a soundtrack.
- There was a film crew.
- Yeah, I didn't see very much--
- I don't think I remember seeing anybody ever,
- but I was very sick in Terezin.
- I got typhus and pneumonia, and I was declared dead.
- And my heart stopped, and there were three really
- good Jewish doctors.
- They all declared me dead.
- And then somehow I revived again, and I was in isolation.
- And so a lot of my time I spent outside even of Terezin.
- It was a normal life in Terezin.
- And it's amazing that we survived all that.
- Of course.
- Were there ever any times during the phase
- that you were there that you, perhaps in a group,
- went outside of the town?
- No, never.
- Not for no working in the vegetable gardens,
- even though it was--
- Yeah, I worked on a vegetable garden inside.
- Oh, there were some inside as well?
- Yeah.
- I did work in a vegetable, and I played soccer.
- But it was also inside.
- Yeah.
- In the-- now, that's interesting, soccer.
- I think-- I forget inside of which kaserne was the soccer--
- I think there was an open field.
- Well, in the propaganda film--
- Yeah, there was inside.
- I played--
- --it's inside.
- Right.
- I played there, too.
- But most of the games were out in an open field.
- I can't remember.
- I didn't-- I thought of going to Terezin this time when I was
- in Prague.
- I ran out of time and didn't feel like going there anyway.
- But I played only one game inside of this kaserne,
- and there were a lot of people, I remember.
- Well, there was a day in--
- again, it was in '44, and I don't
- know whether that was the only one that was played inside.
- It's quite possible because they--
- Kurt Gerron, who was the actor and the theater person who was
- so well-known before the war--
- Kurt Gerron was forced by the Nazis
- to produce this film, propaganda film, which
- was called Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt.
- And he sent a memo saying that tomorrow in such and such--
- [INAUDIBLE] I can look it up.
- I might have it, actually, here.
- There will be a soccer game between the league victors
- and--
- names of two teams.
- And they said, depending upon the weather,
- we need about 3,000 spectators.
- And he said, there should be young people and under no
- circumstances old people.
- Now, in the film, it's a genuine soccer game.
- There are obviously thousands of people there.
- The scene goes on quite long, and it's very possible
- that if that was indeed the only day--
- It could be.
- It was normal place for playing outside, you might be in there.
- It's funny.
- I don't have the video.
- I can show you.
- On another occasion I could.
- You might see yourself.
- I know when I came to Auschwitz there
- was a soccer game going on there, too,
- and a friend of mine did--
- I did know somebody.
- I knew him already in Terezin.
- His name was Taussig, and he changed his name
- to Tessas, which is Czech.
- And when I came to Auschwitz, I saw him in a barrel of water,
- frozen.
- He was sitting in a barrel, but the water was frozen.
- But he survived.
- He survived.
- And then later on, he played soccer for the team
- in Auschwitz.
- And there was an orchestra that were playing, too,
- in Auschwitz, I think as we were coming--
- I remember we were marching.
- But so firstly, it is music, and then we take the showers.
- And then they machined-gunned us.
- This was not Terezin.
- But as we got out of the showers,
- from the tower they turned the machine guns, started shooting.
- Everybody was walking out of these showers.
- So you get these contrasts of--
- they play music, and then they shoot you.
- You were in a group that was machine gunned?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I had to hide until they stopped, and then I continued.
- I know about the orchestra, and actually, I
- have a friend, Martin Roman--
- he lives in New Jersey now many, many years,
- and he was in Terezin.
- He was the director and pianist of the Jazz band
- called the Ghetto Swingers.
- They were also filmed for the propaganda film.
- And when he came to Auschwitz, he
- was assigned to conduct the orchestra,
- and they had to play German matches
- without music, just somehow improvise the parts and so on.
- And so I'm aware of that.
- Yeah.
- Well, I don't know why they did that because nobody ever, I
- think, went to visit that particular camp, some kind
- of sadistic--
- Well, it was-- as you say, I think
- it was this incredible contrast.
- It may have been for them, too, for the Nazis, to play.
- There is a man interviewed on the National Public Radio
- recently.
- They did a performance by the Greater New York
- Choir of the Verdi Requiem in memory of Terezin.
- And the man said that--
- he said the devil, referring to the Germans, is clever.
- And he said, they didn't really realize the--
- it was a spiritual revolt which was
- in these musical performances.
- They realize, of course, the danger
- in these drawings that those artists who were caught-- there
- were four who were taken to the Little Fortress, one of whom
- [PERSONAL NAME].
- And yet it didn't dawn upon them about the possibility
- of this inspiration for hope and this spiritual revolt
- in the music itself.
- And my theory is how they looked--
- actually, some of the song texts,
- more than just the sounds of the music, they would have--
- they really probably would have reacted as they did--
- But I have never seen any spirit of revolt whatsoever.
- Well, I didn't mean open revolt. I
- meant this kind of spiritual resistance of preserving
- your own humanity when they're trying to dehumanize you.
- Yes, that existed, this refusal to accept dehumanization.
- But revolt-- it seemed to be--
- the thing that happened in Warsaw Ghetto--
- that was the real exception, I think.
- That was very untypical.
- Most of the time you were at a mercy,
- and it was a suicide to do anything.
- It was open suicide.
- So you still have enough self-preservation
- not to do that because you knew if you
- did something you were dead, and if you didn't, you
- were dead later.
- How much later you didn't know.
- And I saw too many instances of that.
- So what I remember--
- I have to be careful whether I remember
- is something I saw on a film somewhere or read in a book,
- and I don't watch too many--
- I haven't watched-- I saw a little-- maybe one hour
- of this Shoah and some other films.
- But I'll tell you one thing, that I
- think is very important to-- for you,
- it's important to remember the details
- because you are trying to reconstruct something
- about music in Terezin.
- For me, it's really important to forget the details.
- I'm not trying to remember them.
- Maybe that's why I forgot everything
- because I deliberately try to forget.
- The key thing for anybody who survived the camp
- is that suddenly you face life and death.
- By whatever reason and justice--
- I don't-- it wasn't just.
- You challenged God, obviously.
- I did many times to see, if God exists,
- that he would permit it.
- Those things were important to me.
- But suddenly you kind of found the reason to live,
- and you survived even though you did blasphemy if you challenged
- the existence of God.
- And you also learned some of the values of what it is that they
- cannot take away from you, which could be music.
- It could be art.
- It could be love.
- It could be friendship.
- You can lose money.
- You can use property.
- And that is the incredible thing that
- happens is that any person who survived
- had to be a different person unless that person was so
- insensitive that he or she went through it,
- not realizing what was happening,
- and there were people like that, who really
- went through that whole camp experience,
- and it didn't faze them too much know.
- Well, they were lucky.
- I have a friend here who is here, and she's Czech.
- She went through-- she went through--
- you should talk to her, too, next time.
- I forgot.
- She's in--
- What's her name?
- Elona Freier.
- And she was in the camps, but nobody
- would believe she was in the camp
- because she can't remember anything bad.
- she was in Auschwitz and all those camps, and now she says,
- it wasn't bad.
- I just-- they undressed me and washed me, and then I was--
- and I was liberated, and that was it,
- didn't lose much weight.
- I lost-- I was there.
- I was the thing that you see in all the pictures.
- And she may remember Terezin much better than I do.
- She's in Prague right now.
- So I think the fact--
- I never thought of it that way, but the reason
- that I don't remember is I don't want to remember.
- I don't want to bother myself.
- I don't-- I'm an architect, and I do things.
- And I really don't talk to people about the past
- because I get depressed by people
- who are unable to forget this thing,
- and even this one person who lectures in the United States--
- I forgot his name now, too--
- he's an Austrian Jew who writes books on the concentration camp
- and tries to--
- he built his whole life now around this concentration camp
- experience.
- And--
- He's a professor at a university somewhere.
- Here?
- Yeah.
- At the University of Washington?
- No, the United States.
- You don't mean [PERSONAL NAME]?
- He's not Austrian, of course.
- He was French.
- No.
- I can't think who was Austrian.
- It must be a well-known name.
- Maybe he wasn't Austrian.
- Well, anyway, he built--
- it's his mission-- maybe it is--
- the mission to let people know what happened
- and let it not happen again.
- This is what he is living for now.
- I know many, many people who feel that.
- And I feel that way, too.
- But I'm not willing to sacrifice my personal life
- for that cause, see?
- I do feel very strongly that people should be taught.
- Little children should see these films
- about concentration camps, and it
- might be devastating experience for them.
- But it's more devastating than going to war.
- The camp is worse than going to war where you can fight.
- At least you can defend yourself.
- There you can't defend yourself.
- So if you grow up with this idea that there's
- this horror story that could happen again,
- yes, I believe people should know what happened.
- And there is such a movement now.
- It's really all over the world.
- There are people who are trying, under great academic
- responsibility, to deny that the Holocaust ever took place.
- Well, I know.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- This is terribly dangerous.
- Yeah.
- Well, as more and more people will die,
- there won't be any survivors.
- Eventually, how do you prove it?
- This is one of the reasons that so much--
- I'm a musician and musicologist.
- I'm not a Holocaust historian, perhaps scholar.
- But as I say, when you become involved
- in something seemingly so simple as the music that
- was taking place in certain areas,
- we're constantly involved with the culture around it,
- and the sociology around it, and the psychology around it
- in [INAUDIBLE].
- There was, in the music that was composed there,
- and there was a very strong component of musical symbolism
- because the audience was so very, very conscious.
- I'm sure your father would have been
- a wonderful example of that.
- He certainly was-- his love for music [INAUDIBLE]
- concerts and so on.
- And so when they heard certain things,
- whether Jozef [PERSONAL NAME] or others
- which were put into compositions within the camp,
- that had a great, great meaning for them.
- It didn't have to be said in words.
- It was just audible by hearing the sounds.
- In Terezin, of course, you must have
- crossed many times this rather open park in the center.
- [INAUDIBLE] what would have been east side.
- And the steeple was over even a little more east of that.
- The building was facing the other wall.
- And this square was lined by trees,
- and I understand that what would have been the western street
- and then the southern street on that north
- side of the block of the spot was forbidden for Jews
- to walk on.
- There was a wooden wall around it.
- There was a wooden bridge that could get you
- over it to get behind--
- I remember it.
- I think I was crossing the path through the--
- yeah.
- And, well, I'm not so sure that the park was off-bounds.
- I think it was two--
- Well, that would be, yeah.
- --street behind it.
- Because I know that there is a picture--
- a well-known drawing of the coffeehouse, coffeehouse,
- and you see old people sitting at the tables,
- and we see a couple of musicians on the stage.
- But there's a window, and then through the window
- you see an [INAUDIBLE].
- And you see a fence [INAUDIBLE].
- And it was only just after the other night
- that I realized that perhaps I could
- [INAUDIBLE] what was the significance of that fence?
- It was obviously protecting for the Jews
- entering into that street.
- Perhaps they could go on the sidewalk just
- to get into their house.
- Now, did you ever recall seeing this outdoor stage
- with the roof?
- It was called [INAUDIBLE].
- No.
- That was in the park, in the center of the park.
- I don't recall that at all.
- But again, I would say, just music--
- I think when you get to a certain level--
- below a certain level that music ceases to exist.
- In Terezin, yes, it was strong, and that
- was symbolic of values.
- And a certain kind of music would remind you
- of certain places and experiences.
- When you got to Buchenwald, or Auschwitz, or one of those,
- you didn't hear any music anymore.
- There was nothing.
- There was a band that I went by, but it was strange.
- It was just weird.
- It was a weird experience to see that.
- But then you were really too low unless there were classes.
- People in those camps, too, doctors
- who were better-off and so on that might have had music.
- For them, it was more meaningful.
- But for me, at that point--
- Terezin was really kind of a pseudo concentration camp,
- and it was a pretense of a normal life, community
- that was trying to do all the things, kind
- of Potemkin village in a way.
- Do you think that people had the sense that the Germans were
- allowing it this way in order to make a pretense--
- Yes, I think people knew that there were inspection.
- I have never seen one, but I think
- that was the reason because we didn't think
- they would treat us that way just to treat us this--
- yeah.
- But yeah, there was no looking to the future.
- Just like maybe I don't want to remember,
- I didn't want to look into the future
- either because we didn't want to have these answers which
- were all wrong.
- They were all hopeless.
- So people lived from day to day, essentially,
- waiting for a miracle, and anything in between,
- music certainly, is a wonderful, soothing thing
- spiritually because religion--
- I don't remember any religion in the camp.
- But what else is there?
- Art, drawings, music.
- You couldn't listen to radio.
- You could sing always.
- So there weren't too many things you could do.
- You mentioned religion.
- When I was in Prague the last time,
- I met a man whose name is Jerzy Vrba,
- and he had found several weeks before-- this was in April--
- a secret cinema, actually found some place there
- a secret cinema.
- In Terezin?
- In Terezin, yeah.
- When you go into Terezin today--
- I wasn't there then, but I've seen so many photos
- that I feel as if I know it well,
- and I've seen some photos from before.
- There's really nothing to tell any visitor what went on there.
- There's one little plaque which speaks
- more about the communists and the anti-fascists
- [INAUDIBLE] the people who died there.
- And that may change because there
- are plans to take the police building
- and turn it into a proper museum.
- But there is a museum in the [INAUDIBLE] Terezin,
- just outside with an archive, and exhibitions, and memorials,
- and so on.
- But there is the idea to make a really proper more in-depth
- museum there.
- And if that happened, of course, it
- would certainly bring more people
- coming on a kind of pilgrimage.
- I have another friend who was my girlfriend.
- She said she was my girlfriend in Terezin.
- I didn't remember her.
- And one day, I got a call from Australia, and she said, well,
- do you remember me?
- My name is Edita Drukerova.
- And I said, are you the one I held the hand in the opera,
- and we went to an opera, and you couldn't remember anything
- about the opera because you just remembered my hand?
- She said, no, I'm not the one.
- I said, send me a picture of you how you looked in 1942,
- and send
- OK, so she sent me a tape about Terezin
- that she put together, which is a series of interviews.
- It's not about music, but it's talking to other people
- and talking to her.
- I'm not sure whether she organized it.
- I don't know.
- I'll look if I still have it.
- If I do, I'll give it to you.
- Oh, interesting.
- I sent one to my brother, but it was a different speed.
- It was a a VCR.
- It wasn't a tape.
- Oh, videotape.
- Videotape, pictures.
- But it was the Australian one, which doesn't fit ours.
- Oh.
- I wonder if their video [INAUDIBLE]..
- So I had to change, and I'm not sure I kept a copy.
- I have to look.
- If I have, I'll bring it tomorrow to you.
- That would be nice.
- But it was like some of the other things
- you see on television.
- We have interviews with the survivors,
- and I'm always amazed how much they remember.
- There's a new film, actually.
- I recorded a composition written by the same Robert
- Dauber I mentioned to you, very, very schmaltzy
- serenade [INAUDIBLE] that he wrote
- in 1942 in [? Kaffeehaus. ?] And this piece
- was selected to be in the beginning
- and the conclusion of the film called Terezin Diary
- where about 14 survivors, most of whom were young people,
- were interviewed.
- Do you remember anything-- now you
- recall that you went to an opera and had to go to [CROSS TALK]..
- Well, that was in Prague.
- Oh, it was in Prague.
- That was in Prague.
- I thought it was in Terezin.
- No, no, not in Terezin.
- That was in Prague.
- But she claimed that we were seeing each other in Terezin.
- I don't remember a single instance seeing her in person.
- So it shows you how bad my mother is.
- And they're still trying to meet now.
- She goes to Europe every year, and I go to Europe every year.
- But we always miss by about a week.
- When did you leave?
- You went back to the Prague after the war, obviously.
- Yes, we went back to--
- How long did you stay there?
- Well, we stayed-- I finished school
- because we couldn't go to school during the occupation.
- So in 1945, we got back, and in December '48
- we escaped on skis.
- On skis?
- Yeah.
- My brother, and I, and two other brothers,
- through the shooting guards, we had a whole melodramatic kind
- of an escape.
- But they didn't-- it was at night,
- and we escaped into Bavaria, skied all night.
- And then we were put in Ludwigsburg, which
- was a displaced person camp.
- And we escaped that because, strange enough,
- communists were interviewing you there.
- Was this the Czech guards who were trying to prevent you
- from leaving with the German guards
- preventing you from going in?
- No, these were people preventing us
- from leaving, the guards on the border,
- right, right, the communists.
- Because you were not allowed to leave,
- and later on, they had the no man's land.
- It was getting more and more difficult.
- They kept improving it.
- So anyway, so we escaped there, and from there it's
- a long saga of strange, strange stories.
- But we got into Luxembourg, spent a year in Luxembourg.
- Then I got a scholarship in Nebraska, which
- was a very musical school.
- It was a Presbyterian college, mid-west.
- And I got a degree in mathematics
- because one thing I couldn't pass in Prague was mathematics.
- I was scared to death of it, so I decided I better get it out
- of my system.
- And then I enrolled in Princeton and stayed--
- graduated in '55, and then worked in New York City five
- years, and then--
- As an architect?
- As an architect and then came here
- and have been here ever since.
- Now, was this last trip to Prague your first time
- you went back since you left?
- No, no.
- I went back probably three times before,
- and I was there last year, too.
- And what I tried to do--
- before, it was very unpleasant always.
- It was very difficult for me to get a visa.
- I would get it somehow but not officially.
- I wanted to go to Bern, Switzerland,
- and they would give it to me immediately.
- But I couldn't get it through Washington, DC.
- They would always deny it.
- Then a year ago, I went there because I
- got a letter of invitation from the communists to do a hotel.
- Now, I wrote from here.
- It took a year for them to answer.
- I got an answer.
- So I went for three days to Prague.
- And this time, I went to continue on that hotel,
- and now we have an office in Prague.
- So we are associated with an office.
- I have a partner who is right now in Prague
- trying to work it out.
- And we're still dealing with the same communists, strangely
- enough.
- They still-- the people who are on top then
- are still on top, which is the Czech way of doing it,
- very slowly.
- So I may go back again.
- I don't know, several times--
- Have you been there since the so-called "Velvet Revolution"?
- Yes, I was there--
- Oh, that's right.
- You told me you were there--
- --two months ago.
- --a few months ago.
- Right.
- And the Velvet Revolution was 17th November.
- Yeah.
- How did it feel?
- Oh, wonderful.
- It was the most exciting--
- it's a strange thing.
- When I came to this country, I kept away from Jews.
- I kept away from Czechs, and I kept away from Germans.
- I didn't like any of them.
- Either they depressed me, and--
- and I still have lots of these feelings against the Czechs.
- And the Czechs don't deserve the government that they get now.
- They have a government of intellectuals and idealists
- with the president who is far-out.
- And they will fail, probably, because of that,
- and it will be a wonderful failure.
- But it will fail because they are not
- these people who would lobby, and scheme,
- and have all kinds of ways of accomplishing ends.
- They are pretty honest.
- So I don't think the Czechs deserve it,
- and the Poles are much worse than the Czechs.
- The Poles are terrible.
- If you-- and you have the anti-Semitic thing in Poland.
- There was an article in Seattle Times about three weeks ago,
- somebody who traveled to of all these countries
- and said with this new freedom, and this independence,
- and nationalism there is this tremendous anti-Semitism.
- And he found it everywhere in Slovakia-- it was awful--
- Poland, Hungary.
- But in Bohemia, the Czech part, he
- found none, which was not true.
- There is, too, but the Czechs seem
- to be kind of indifferent to anything right now.
- I was in a streetcar, and the Germans are obnoxious.
- The Germans have taken over Prague.
- The tourists?
- The tourists.
- And I don't know whether they're West or East Germans.
- Maybe they're West Germans.
- And they behave just like the Nazis again.
- They would be on the underground, on a subway,
- and they were running around, and slapping women, and making
- fun out of everybody.
- And I was going to get up and tell
- them what I thought, to shut up or get out,
- but not a single Czech paid any attention.
- They all read the papers.
- They all sit there.
- They completely ignored it, cold-blooded.
- And maybe that's part of it.
- They really have no feelings about anything,
- except the freedom now.
- That relates a little bit to what you told me
- on the telephone, and perhaps you
- could relate it again, of coming back
- to Prague with your brother--
- Oh, well--
- --being on the streetcar.
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- Well, that's why-- it's very hard
- to accept a nation that's sometimes so little,
- and people get so petty.
- That's correct.
- I was on a streetcar with duffel bags, and parents were dead,
- and they tried to--
- they're blocking the exit.
- And they were just nasty, and they
- could see we were from concentration camps.
- But that didn't faze them, of course.
- People are selfish.
- And there was a man that you knew, actually,
- who [CROSS TALK]--
- Oh, yeah.
- Then in the street we were walking,
- and there was a teacher.
- And so his-- there's water dripping from our apartment.
- He's below us, and it was--
- the Nazi who lived there escaped,
- and so he couldn't get in, and would we check what's leaking?
- And that was the only thing that he said.
- Oh, you survived, kind of disappointed.
- Oh, you survived.
- [LAUGHS]
- And so it's tough.
- It's tough to-- and then my father, being an attorney--
- we found his files, and we found out
- there were a lot of people who owed him money.
- So we started calling these people and said,
- you know, this debt is still legitimate.
- Would you pay?
- And the thing is, oh, you survived.
- They're like, Jesus, why didn't you die and leave me alone?
- And did you get some--
- Yeah, they paid.
- They had to pay.
- At that time, when you returned, they return the property,
- whether it was left and so on, and if there were any debts,
- it just resumed.
- Now it's more complicated.
- I still have property in Prague, but it's questionable
- whether they'll return it.
- They don't know how to handle it yet, particularly
- if I'm in the United States.
- If I lived there, then probably I would have a chance.
- No, it's a crude world.
- It's not a very nice world, if you
- want to be really honest about it, and music is an escape.
- It's a wonderful escape from it because you can
- escape the realities, you see.
- Music is like a religion.
- It's another form of religion, and you need it.
- You have to create it if you don't have it.
- It's just--
- It's very rare to meet someone who could somewhat
- live without music.
- Most people feel that it's something just as simple as--
- That was a surprising thing-- you could not live without art,
- and music is part of the art.
- Even when you're very, very low, dying, still needed it.
- It's not a luxury.
- It's a necessity.
- That's true.
- That's very true.
- But you don't realize it when you're well-off.
- Then you're not aware of the values.
- And this is, to me, the lesson of all this thing.
- Of course, I am not writing an encyclopedia or kind
- of a history of it, so I don't care.
- I care more about the essence of what's
- behind all that, what is it, what is the meaning, rather
- than all the facts.
- As long as I can remember it's that something
- caused this kind of a thinking.
- I didn't invent it or whatever.
- So what do you feel is the ultimate meaning--
- The ultimate meaning of life?
- Well, of the experience and in the light of the experience--
- Well, I think the ultimate meaning from my personal point
- of view is the realization that the superficial things that
- are very comfortable like having a car, and a nice house,
- and money are very important but absolutely meaningless
- in terms of what's life about.
- Now, I'm not sure what life about.
- I have no idea what life is about.
- But if I hadn't gone through the camps,
- I would have been a spoiled person from a wealthy family
- who would be unbearable and never really found out
- what life is about.
- Now, I still haven't found out what life is about,
- but I think I'm closer.
- But at least you have some sense that there's
- some values with it.
- I have a sense of values that I--
- [CROSS TALK]
- --I can-- it's very difficult to look at things philosophically
- because you're are only human, and you still like and dislike,
- and you still want to go and shop.
- But when you do sustain a loss and you stop--
- it's just like the painting.
- You step back, and you get away from the little detail,
- and see the total picture.
- You realize it wasn't very important.
- You don't need it.
- And when I see people who--
- maybe that's the other meaning when I see
- people who are very rich today.
- And they work real hard to make more money,
- and they invest the money.
- Well, they don't really have the money,
- and in order to enjoy it-- they really can't enjoy it.
- There's this pressure.
- They're part of an entirely different world,
- and they have lost the ability to live and enjoy,
- to be themselves, because they're
- in search of something that's very superficial.
- But because they haven't gone through this experience,
- they won't believe you if you tell them,
- this is not important.
- A stockbroker in New York making millions-- to him,
- that's the most important thing.
- Then he gets a heart attack maybe.
- Then maybe he changed his mind.
- But if you don't--
- so going through that very young--
- it's a very tough way to learn, destroying your childhood,
- but then, in a way, you have to thank them for all the years
- afterwards that you are supposedly
- living a fuller life.
- And then who cares?
- Nobody cares.
- Well, I think it's remarkable for any of you--
- I say "you" meaning collectively who went through this horrible,
- horrible experience-- someone to come back,
- and rebuild you lives, and go on, and even with misgivings
- still be optimistic and--
- Well, you actually are more optimistic.
- I think people who went through it
- are more optimistic because you did survive something you
- were not supposed to survive.
- And I find myself always much more optimistic in anything
- than most of the other people because you see positive things
- where they don't see them.
- But you hate to dwell on it.
- It's something in your background.
- It's something back in your mind because I'm just as petty
- and get upset about a lot of things normally.
- It's only when suddenly something more serious hits
- or when you are setting out-- well, like right now.
- All of a sudden, I have to decide what I should do--
- I'm not-- I was an architect for 30 years at my own firm,
- and because of Alaska oil problem,
- the firm disintegrated.
- And I worked for a very large firm then [INAUDIBLE]
- architecture, and suddenly I found myself at the age of 63
- without a job.
- And then I had to decide what do I want to do with my life?
- Do I go and get another job and work from 8:00 to 5:00?
- So I got together with a group of two other people,
- and we said we really want to enjoy what we are doing.
- You're enjoying teaching.
- You enjoy music.
- You're enjoying your Terezin Project.
- It's work, but it's not drudgery.
- It's not--
- [CROSS TALK]
- There's a satisfaction.
- It's not that you are punching some machine from 8:00 to 5:00
- and then you start living.
- And we said, God, time is limited right,
- so let's live while we work.
- Let's see if we can survive on minimum subsistence.
- And I'm making very little money now,
- but I enjoy myself tremendously because I'm
- trying to do these hotels in Prague, trying to do a book now
- about Prague for Macmillan Publishers,
- but I may not go ahead.
- I talked yesterday.
- I'm doing these things, and there are all these friends
- of mine who are making $100,000 a year, envying, thinking
- I live like a king, $10,000 a year now.
- But they can't take time off from working because they
- own too much, and they have to pay
- on their sailboat and some country house,
- and he's buying a property here.
- But he doesn't have time to use it.
- So to me, this goes back to the concentration camp
- in a very subtle way, that you don't mix up your values.
- You suddenly start setting priorities
- and say, well, I really want to get rich.
- I don't think that's necessary in life to do that.
- But unfortunately for you, I'm not that interested in music.
- It's never been.
- And I tell you, I perhaps--
- in some ways, I go a little bit beyond what
- would seem to be the scope of being interested in the music,
- but it always happens that there's some small thing which
- sheds just a little bit of light, another angle
- on some musical part.
- And even the fact that you're saying that you [?
- never really ?] auditioned for the opera,
- and you didn't make it he did, it was the choir, or whatever,
- and it fleshes out this whole story.
- It's not that--
- Well--
- --I don't know-- I mean I know many, many musician
- survivors as well as others, but as I said,
- we don't deal only with music or anything just in isolation.
- No, I think it would be pretty dull, yeah.
- So there's other things around it.
- When I give my lectures, which I did deal on the Terezin music,
- I try also-- although 95% is about the music,
- I do try to give a sense of what the ghetto was.
- I show slides from the propaganda film,
- being very careful to end the slides
- with the scenes [INAUDIBLE].
- In other words, in the form that they see--
- I can show you many pictures, still shots from that film,
- of people carrying pass to go into the street,
- in the street and audiences in performance who were really--
- in some ways, they look like they're dead.
- It's just powerful to see it.
- On the other hand, I know that for many people,
- especially for young people who were able to go off and not
- have to be under the thumb of their parents
- and some of the things that [INAUDIBLE] do this or that.
- Some of the survivors that I've spoken
- to feel that these were, actually, ironically
- and paradoxically, very good years.
- They feel guilty perhaps even to say it that way.
- Well--
- I don't mean the way it sounds, but there was some aspect of it
- which was something that they remember very strongly.
- And in your case, obviously, you benefited.
- I mean, it was--
- Well, I benefited in a funny, perverse way, but--
- Yes, of course.
- They were not good years.
- The three years were terrible.
- But the realization of what it all meant--
- that is something that is--
- it's probably like people going to the Vietnam War.
- It's all these horrible experiences
- where you face life and death at the most basic level.
- You are part of something that you don't control,
- and you come out of it.
- And you are one of the few who survive by absolutely no logic
- or reason, just luck and because you're young.
- You obviously have to think about it.
- What does the whole thing mean?
- Unless you are a complete idiot, and there
- were such people who didn't think about it,
- that went through--
- so you're right.
- Music is an extremely important thing up to a certain level.
- Below a certain level, it really--
- I don't think-- in Terezin, yes, they
- were really willing to kill for food and very, very few people.
- But I don't remember any music in the awful concentration
- camps in the end.
- Maybe at the entrance, but that was it.
- Sure.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- But I'll try to make an effort to find some material.
- I think-- I'll ask these people, and, well,
- you'll probably be back again sometime.
- Well, I think-- I'll give you my address.
- I'll be back at the end of January.
- I'm being brought two times back for some concerts,
- and I'll come a little early for the first time
- from other things, and then I'll stay a little later
- for the second time.
- So I'll be around for a number of months during next year.
- Certainly this book of your father's poems would be great--
- Well, I'll bring it.
- --to have there.
- I'll bring it.
- Absolutely.
- I'll--
- You'll get it from them, definitely, because I found--
- I started to say, and I didn't finish.
- I found earlier or two nights ago,
- when I went with [PERSONAL NAME],,
- his mother had actually bought for food or been given three--
- two--
- two drawings and an oil painting.
- [INAUDIBLE] one of them was Hilda Zadikow, who's
- actually quite well-known.
- I've seen reproductions [INAUDIBLE]..
- And one of them is--
- it looks-- it's a very fine, tiny, tiny pencil drawing
- or ink of the mass of people going across this plaza
- that I mentioned, perhaps arriving.
- Another one is on one of the streets where the women--
- the living quarters was such that women could do laundry,
- and up on a kind of a balcony in this narrow street
- they're hanging out.
- And then the other one is of the Dresden Barrack.
- It was the kaserne.
- And this is the oil painting.
- Karlinsky, I think that man's name is.
- And immediately, when I saw it, I
- said, if you would be willing-- and they were yesterday.
- She took them-- I arranged with the photographer in the shop.
- Just the moment she brought them, he would do it.
- So you have to be in the right [INAUDIBLE],,
- and I made slides for myself.
- And I'll give it to the--
- to the archives so they will be absolutely--
- Well, I think that--
- [CROSS TALK]
- We're trying to remember where are the original thing is
- of this because this was retyped by my brother, I think,
- and I think he illustrated the original.
- And then when I went to Terezin, there
- were some drawings exhibited that were his or my parents
- also of Terezin.
- You went to Terezin after the war?
- No, in Prague.
- Oh, in Prague.
- There was a Terezin museum in Prague.
- You mean--
- Terezin drawings.
- Oh, that's in this old-- next to the cemetery.
- Next to the cemetery.
- Right.
- Right.
- That's basically the collection of children's drawings,
- most of them, right.
- And there were some drawings by my brother,
- apparently by my mother.
- I can't remember.
- But he illustrated his whole epopee,
- the writing of my father.
- What does it mean, epopee?
- Epopee means kind of a big work.
- Epopee is-- or Odyssey.
- It's something like that.
- Maybe that's it.
- I'm not sure.
- We should look it up in the dictionary, what epopee is.
- He called it epopee.
- I think it's an Odyssey.
- Yeah.
- Well, I--
- When you go back to Prague.
- It depends.
- I have an agreement with the developer
- here to find him a property for a hotel,
- and he wants me to go four times.
- I'm supposed to meet with him, probably next week.
- I came back with 10 potential sites,
- and some are magnificent.
- And we were the first Americans, two of us, one from Texas
- and I--
- will be an American joint venture.
- All these others are German, and there's
- lots of uneasiness about German money, which
- is being brought by Czechs from Germany
- by both BMW and big outfits because they're
- afraid that Germany is going to buy Czechoslovakia again.
- So they would hold property for us because we are American
- rather than give it to the Germans who are offering money,
- and we didn't offer money.
- Still, they held it for us.
- So I don't know whether they'll succeed because nobody knows
- who owns the property now.
- See, it's the state.
- Oh, I see.
- I see.
- But the state is not the owner anymore, so they have--
- If it's not known, does the state
- have the power to resell it or reallocate it?
- Well, they haven't decided how to do it yet.
- Because they have too many other problems that have priority,
- like how to pay back the political prisoners.
- That's what was so fascinating watching on television.
- Like I was watching television where
- the Secretary of Interior, Sacher,
- was being accused that he kept the high communists in very
- sensitive positions still in power
- and that they were making secret files on all
- the members of the parliament.
- And so he admitted that there was a shadow government
- and shadow cabinet, and he said, I
- have to do it because this is a centralized government.
- And if I cut them all out immediately,
- we'll have chaos, anarchy.
- We can't do that.
- We have to have a transition, have
- to keep these people for three or four months,
- teach other people have to do it.
- I know they're communists.
- And they said, no, we want your resignation immediately.
- It was on television, right.
- So then he said, OK, I'll name them.
- So then they said, let's turn off the television.
- So they turned off the television,
- and they voted whether television should continue.
- They voted that television should continue.
- Television came on.
- He named all the communists.
- This was going on till midnight, and it
- was fascinating to see this democracy in action.
- And it was true.
- I mean they were communists.
- The people whose heads are not going
- to roll because Havel is a humanitarian,
- and he wants to say, let's not punish them
- unless they committed crimes.
- So it was--
- I want to go back just to experience still
- this kind of a change that's going on,
- and the Czechs are doing it better,
- I think, than any other nation in Eastern Europe.
- I get-- I met a young English fellow, a student,
- 23 years old.
- He had finished Cambridge University,
- and we went for a long walk across the river,
- and then there's a palace and a beautiful park.
- My wife was going with me as well.
- And he was doing some English teaching,
- and he did it mostly starting with conversations and so on.
- And he said the very first time he went, he started
- by telling them how, in England, there's
- a great deal of unemployment, and there's
- riots at the soccer games, and so we talked for a while.
- And afterwards, he asked--
- tried to get them involved in discussion,
- and nobody was saying anything.
- So he went to have a drink with a couple of people
- who did talk with him, and he said,
- why didn't anyone talk at all?
- And they said, the communists have been telling us
- all these things about your country for years,
- and now you came.
- And they didn't-- they couldn't believe it.
- They thought he was a communist.
- They couldn't believe that--
- Yeah, I really have to do--
- --because they had thought that it wasn't true.
- Here you come from England, and you
- say the same thing they said.
- And so they were very suspicious.
- Later, the ice was broken, and they talked.
- Yeah.
- You have to be careful because I gave
- a lecture to the architects in Prague, and they want me back.
- There were not that many, but they want to have more.
- And whether it was, I showed slides of my work
- for maybe 20 minutes, and then for about two hours
- there were questions.
- And they wanted to know, well, if you don't work
- for the state, how do we work?
- And how do you find work?
- And can you advertise?
- And how do you survive?
- How do you do all these things?
- Where do you find these people?
- And how does a small office operate?
- And, well, I told them it's not easy.
- It's really hard, and there's no one
- taking care of you, nobody telling you what to do.
- If you don't do anything, you don't have money.
- If you don't have money, you don't get in the hospital
- sometimes, things like that.
- But I first told them how wonderful things are.
- So if you put it in perspective, I say,
- yes, we have computers, and 50 stations on television,
- and you can buy anything you want,
- and there's all the food you can eat.
- But we have people sleeping in the streets, I said,
- a high suicide rate, and we have alcoholics.
- We have drugs, gangs.
- But if you put it in context, what the communists did--
- they presented a flat, two-dimensional world,
- and what the propaganda tried to do
- is also counteract that fact.
- I spent two years lecturing all over the United States
- when I escaped, and what I was telling them
- was what was good about communism.
- I would get on a platform and tell people,
- now let me tell you, if you're in Czechoslovakia
- now, what was good about communism.
- They confiscated the rich people's farms
- and gave it to all the poor people.
- The young people who were lost-- they joined organizations.
- If you never could find a girlfriend,
- they'll give you-- they'll assign a girlfriend for you.
- They assign a girlfriend to you.
- Easy, a wonderful life.
- You get free things to spas.
- You go for a vacation to Marienbad and Carlsbad.
- You don't have to pay.
- They take care of you.
- It's a wonderful life.
- You don't have to worry.
- You're never unemployed.
- And so why not join the party?
- You have nothing to lose.
- They don't care you're wise.
- There are professors.
- There are musicians, intellectual people who
- are members of the party, and they would go and approach
- the other intellectual people.
- And the worker would go and approach
- the workers, very cleverly done.
- And so I would tell these audiences,
- if communism comes to America, you
- won't even know that communists.
- They are your friends.
- They are these very nice people.
- But one day, they had some things on their armbands.
- They had a gun in the thing.
- They occupied the post office and the bridges.
- And you wake up, and you can't do what you have to do.
- Yeah, it's a very subtle thing.
- They did good things, the communists.
- They did do it.
- Not everything was bad.
- In fact, a lot of people voted for-- now I
- don't know how many people voted for them this latest election.
- I haven't been able to find out in local Seattle press.
- I seem to remember they got about 20%.
- Was it 20%?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- But nobody that I spoke with had any fear
- that somehow they would be able to get back, though.
- No, they can't.
- There's no way.
- I think in Romania, if it came to that, which it certainly
- won't come to that.
- No, they would not-- it can't become
- Romania and Czechoslovakia.
- They are two--
- [CROSS TALK] countries.
- Well, the country has a history of not fighting.
- You don't see many revolutions in Czechoslovakia.
- People will think it over 100 times before they finally move,
- and the students are really the only vigilante there
- that really--
- students all over the world will do that,
- and they'll demonstrate.
- And they'll go and fight.
- But they don't represent the nation at all.
- The nation is very passive and very pragmatic.
- And they'll revolt if they know--
- 99% sure they'll succeed.
- Then they'll have a revolution.
- But if it's 50/50, they won't.
- Well, we will-- we're going to be back, my wife and I,
- in September to make another recording for the radio.
- It could be very interesting because this time we're
- going to do [CROSS TALK].
- In Prague you have--
- In Prague, yeah.
- We did it two years ago, and that was some music
- by [INAUDIBLE] and one of the main composers in Terezin.
- But now we're going to be more [INAUDIBLE]..
- Do you know where you will be in Prague?
- Where will--
- The address?
- Well, it's usually a little different.
- Actually, when I went the first time, two times,
- actually, I did stay mostly in the Ambassador Hotel.
- But after that, I got to know some people,
- and I had private places to stay.
- And when my wife was with me in 1988,
- we had an apartment, actually.
- So you're staying with people, yeah.
- On weekends.
- And I still remember myself, a friend
- arranged for me to stay with a very nice family who
- were very happy to get [INAUDIBLE] a night.
- Yeah, that's what I did.
- I stayed with people.
- I'd pay them.
- And it was excellent for me, and it was good for them.
- And so I probably will continue in that way.
- The hotels are rather expensive, and I learned very quickly not
- to go through Cedok.
- No.
- I mean I learned not in a bad way
- but sort of the hard way just as a--
- You can't even get a--
- in September maybe, but it's very difficult
- to get a room in a hotel.
- So I'm trying to--
- I'm trying to build several times.
- I'm trying to build a real nice one, maybe a suite
- hotel out of a 300-year-old farm, very small.
- How far from the center would it be?
- It's about 4 miles, one of them.
- Well, I have different sites, but I have two farms,
- one location near the airport.
- Then I have some incredible location right downtown
- by Charles Bridge, which is an old monastery called
- Krizovnicky palac.
- It's the Order of the Cross.
- Where the police is now-- and this is the Ministry
- of Interior--
- that can be converted into a hotel, remodeled.
- And you know Charles Bridge is the--
- Of course.
- Well, this is right next to it.
- It's a spectacular location.
- Oh, I know, right.
- And then several others.
- So all these are opportunities to a different kind
- of a building, and it all would be joint venture
- with the Czechs on some kind of a basis and part of it
- built by the Czechs but most of it not.
- The quality is--
- I have so far seen--
- I've walked-- when I've walked across the bridge and up
- onto the area of the palace and the cathedral and then down
- through the park.
- Then we came down to a very nice residential district,
- and the old houses were-- some of them were very beautiful.
- And then this time--
- usually I take the train when I leave.
- This time I flew.
- So we went to cross that northern bridge, which
- I haven't done, and then went to the airport.
- And I saw there's a very beautiful, beautiful
- residential district there with tree-lined streets
- and big, beautiful homes.
- I don't know who lives there exactly, but I was surprised.
- I didn't realize there was that kind of an area.
- Well, they are butchers.
- Interesting.
- Like I went to Barrandov.
- Barrandov is the place where they have the film
- studio in Prague, and there's a place
- where also I could have a hotel, and there
- are beautiful villas all over.
- And I said, who are these people?
- They're butchers.
- They're all butchers.
- They made a lot of money.
- So they bought all these villas.
- Well, before the war, I don't know who it was.
- But then they bought it.
- So yeah, there are still-- most of the things
- were communists in these villas, and that may change.
- It's a very slow transition.
- There were not too many villas in Prague.
- It was very unusual.
- There were some near Letna and so on, which
- is kind of more suburbs, but most of people
- lived in big apartment buildings.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I did go out not this year, the year
- before a weekend in a little, tiny village near Ceska Lipa,
- and I saw as we walked around between these little villages
- some people they must be people of means.
- I mean, perhaps they came [INAUDIBLE]
- sort of a weekend [INAUDIBLE] some of these old, old homes,
- farmhouses, have been fixed up.
- They have beautiful gardens, and it's
- real next to some which are just so dilapidated.
- Yeah.
- There are people--
- [CROSS TALK]
- Yeah.
- Like there's a group of glass artists
- who come here every year.
- My neighbor is German, but she, for some reason,
- likes Czech artists.
- So they have about 10 or 15 of them
- who have been coming last 10 years before this change,
- and they make a lot of money.
- They go to Pilchuck.
- Even we know Pilchuck here.
- And they teach there blowing glass.
- And they come back, and they have beautiful places.
- They can afford it.
- They have nice cars.
- They have their country homes.
- And most of the Czechs also spend all their effort
- on stealing.
- When you work, you can't buy anything in Czechoslovakia,
- so from your work you steal everything.
- Then you barter it for something else.
- And their country homes are beautiful, but it's all stolen.
- You see?
- This was this terrible economy that existed,
- and this is the real big problem they
- have today because they have to learn that all the things that
- are right then are wrong today, not to work,
- the passive resistance, all that.
- And if there were any communists voting for communists today,
- it's the people who realize they have to start working
- and aren't used to it, really working, and producing,
- and going over time.
- And when I told them in our meetings
- that if we collect money here and the people have
- to pay interest on it, it's important to finish the work
- early.
- In a year?
- They said three years.
- I said, no, a year.
- Impossible.
- I said, well, overtime.
- No, we can't work overtime.
- Weekends, double-pay, triple-- no, it can't be done.
- It's just impossible.
- They are not thinking in those terms yet.
- Well, let's hope that it does go forward, and [CROSS TALK]..
- I won't keep you any longer.
Overview
- Interviewee
- George Hartman
- Date
-
interview:
1990 June 14
- Geography
-
creation:
Seattle (Wash.)
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Emilie Berendsen Bloch, Benjamin Bloch, and Ariel Bloch
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
2 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
- Hartman, George.
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/irn558982
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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 interview with Ruth Elias
Oral History
Oral history interview with Robert Kolban
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.