- So once again, we're September 8, 1995 in Stockholm
- and talking with Thomas Mandl from Düsseldorf
- about his musical background and his experiences
- in musical activity of Terezín.
- So let's first, Thomas, hear about your musical training.
- Yeah, my musical training started at the age of seven
- in Ostrava, where our family lived.
- And my teacher was the German violinist,
- Wolfgang [? Konneman, ?] who was head of an institution he
- called Musikbildungsanstalt, meaning an institution
- for musical education.
- And he was a very, very decent person
- who kept up the contact with our family,
- even after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia,
- and Jews were no human beings at all.
- Then we moved to Brno.
- And my new teacher of violin was Milos Sokola, right now,
- better known as a composer than as a violinist.
- He, at that time, was studying violin
- at the conservatory in Brno.
- And I was about 10 years old when
- I started to be taught by him.
- And he was able to introduce me to a bit higher level,
- like playing in the positions and introducing the Shevchenko
- school of violin technique.
- And that period, I'd developed a real interest in music.
- And I became something like a violin chauvinist,
- considering violin being the superior instrument,
- and all the other instruments in musical activities
- being inferior.
- And of course, this was caused by my romantic visions
- of a violinist, like Paganini and people like him.
- And the occupation of Czechoslovakia
- interrupted this, not because Sokola
- was afraid to contact Jewish people,
- but because he became the head of a music school
- somewhere in Bohemia and was no longer in Brno.
- And finally, my father found a former viola player
- from the Vienna Philharmonic, Edward Weiss,
- who was a composer too, who taught me violin.
- And it was the first time I played
- with the accompaniment of a little orchestra Pablo de
- Sarasate "Zigeunerweisen," "Gypsy Songs."
- And all this came to an end, or would have come to an end,
- because, I guess, in 1940, all musical instruments owned
- by Jews had to be given up.
- So my father, who was--
- he was an engineer, but he was a fanatical musician
- at the same time.
- So he came up with the idea to buy me
- a so-called mute violin, which is an instrument where
- you can just hear the strings, no resonance at all.
- And he argued, we could say, this
- is not a musical instrument.
- It's either a toy or some technical device.
- So we wouldn't be violating the Nazi laws
- by using a mute violin.
- And this mute violin, I used until the day
- of our deportation to Terezin in March 1942.
- And in Terezín, all musical instruments, at that time,
- were illegal.
- But I heard that the violinist [? Heini ?] [? Taussig ?] had
- a violin.
- So I approached him one day and told him, look,
- couldn't I practice for a while on your violin?
- And he very reluctantly said, OK.
- And so I had a chance to do a little practicing.
- But I had to give him the instrument back.
- And then I was transferred to the so-called
- Zentralsekretariat, which was the office of the Elder
- of Jews, Jakob Edelstein, and his deputy, engineer Otto
- Zuckert, who was a very, very keen violinist, kind of owned
- a violin.
- And one day, I approached him and told him, look,
- I'm desperately trying to practice the violin.
- And should the SS catch me with the violin,
- it will be my own violin.
- You won't be compromised, at which he smiled and said,
- it's OK.
- And you will pick up the violin within the next few days.
- And I was very, very happy to have a violin.
- Of course, there was still the danger of being caught,
- either by a gendarme or an SS trooper.
- So I had to be very careful in selecting
- a place for practicing.
- Did you know of any cases where musicians
- were caught with instruments?
- No, no, I didn't.
- But nevertheless, musical instruments
- were considered contraband, the same thing
- as cigarettes or alcohol.
- And with cigarettes, there were gigantic tragedies in Terezín.
- A cigarette-- if you were caught with a cigarette,
- it meant certain death because you
- were put into the next transport, which
- from August '42 was Auschwitz.
- So that was practically your end.
- I didn't know that people were sent to Auschwitz,
- but I did know that people were sent into the transport.
- And the transport was the one thing people
- in the ghetto dreaded most, although they were not
- aware of the destination.
- And the word Auschwitz was unknown to me
- while I was in Theresienstadt.
- But nevertheless, people were terrified,
- and as we now know, rightly so, by the word transport.
- I forgot to ask one thing.
- What year were you born?
- I was born in 1926.
- 1926.
- So you were already?
- I was approximately--
- 16?
- 15.
- So then the problem arose, I realized,
- I wasn't far enough, good enough to do practicing
- without the aid of a teacher.
- So again, my father found a lady from Germany.
- Her name was [? Spielman. ?] And she was teaching me the violin.
- Unfortunately, Mrs. [? Spielman ?]
- vanished with one of the next transports.
- And again, I was without a teacher.
- So finally, I started studying with a Karel Frohlich, who
- was an excellent violinist, a master of all styles,
- and with a beautiful technique.
- He played equally well with a Tchaikovsky concerto,
- and the Dvorak, and Brahms concerto, and Paganini.
- And he was a great teacher, with one exception.
- He forced me to play without a pad.
- Without a pad?
- A pad--
- Yes, yes.
- --on the shoulder--
- Right.
- --which elevates the violin to such an extent
- that you can hold it with your shoulder and your chin,
- leaving your left hand free for the technique.
- Yes.
- Why did he have it taken, not--
- He said--
- --using it?
- He didn't need it himself, but he
- was a person of athletic build.
- He had broad shoulders.
- And he was able to do it without a pad.
- And his argument was acoustically,
- it's better if you play without a pad
- because the resonance embraces your chest too, not
- only the violin.
- So the resonance is bigger.
- And he may be right.
- And he has a predecessor in France, the Dalcroze method,
- but I don't think it was a good thing for me
- because my shoulders are narrow, and were narrow,
- and most of my technique went to hell by renouncing the pad.
- But nevertheless, I learned a number of things.
- And at the same time, the price for a lesson
- was a slice of bread.
- So I didn't know how my father managed it,
- but I was able to pay.
- Where did you have the lessons?
- Did you go to his living place?
- I went to his living quarters.
- He had the privilege of having a very, very small room
- in the Magdeburger kaserne with his wife,
- which was a gigantic advantage over the average prisoner.
- Yes.
- Why was he so allowed to have better condition?
- I guess because he was either the first transport
- to Theresienstadt, AK1 or AK2, AK meaning Aufbaukommando.
- And these people had all or most of the important positions
- in the ghetto.
- And so he, obviously, somehow, managed
- to get this gigantic privilege of living with his wife.
- Were you aware of any feelings of jealousy
- on the part of other people because of these people
- who were considered to be the prominent sometimes?
- Yeah.
- There existed problems like that.
- And as I mentioned, I worked at that Zentralsekretariat
- of the Elder of Jews.
- And I, among other things, had to go
- through the mail, the official mail,
- and the mail directed to the Elder of Jews, Edelstein.
- And for instance, I remember a letter where
- one prisoner complained that all of the good positions
- were held, quote, "by Polish Jews," unquote.
- And I even read Edelstein's answer,
- which was very, very polite.
- And it pointed out, many positions
- were filled by people who came here first.
- But it's unknown to me, and I'm quite surprised that a person
- living in Theresienstadt has time
- to pursue the hobby of genealogy,
- tracing back the origin of people.
- And as all his letters, it ended with the words, [GERMAN]..
- I regret that I am unable to help you.
- But I'm unable to alter the facts, as a free translation.
- It showed I was a very young and inexperienced person.
- But even at that time, I understood that somehow,
- subconsciously, although the person who
- had written the letter was unhappy with his situation,
- he implicitly trusted Edelstein that he would take no revenge.
- And he was right.
- Edelstein was a real and true gentleman,
- up to the very last minute of his short life.
- There was jealousy.
- And of course, when the transports
- from Germany and Austria started arriving,
- they found that all of the so-called lucrative positions
- were in the hands of Czech Jews, especially Jews
- from Prague, because Prague was the place where
- the first transport started.
- But this was later changed.
- And for instance, the bass buffo [? Herbert ?] [? Lowenberg, ?]
- who was an opera star in one of Germany's opera scenes,
- started working at the children's kitchen.
- So many people of German Jewish origin
- came into high positions.
- And all of this was changed by the SS commandant,
- who, as I heard--
- I don't know whether it's true--
- insisted upon a kind of job-sharing
- with Jews from the so-called Altreich, the old German Reich.
- Incidentally, what was the date that you and your family came?
- We were-- we started the transport in Brno,
- I guess, on March 27, 1942.
- We were in quarantine for three days.
- And then we were taken to the main railroad station.
- That was at a time when Jews were no longer
- allowed to use streetcars.
- And we had a special streetcar, which
- went from the Senefelderstrasse in Brno
- straight to the main railroad station,
- where we had a section that was reserved
- for the Jewish transport only.
- It was not accessible to normal travelers.
- I wanted to ask, also--
- you were, of course, very young.
- But when you were still in Brno and doing your music studies,
- did you have any contact or awareness of Pavel Haas?
- Yeah, Pavel Haas was my music teacher
- at the Jewish gymnasium, or high school, in Brno.
- And incidentally, I had a very good friend
- whose name is Heinz Rosenzweig.
- He started as a wunderkind on the violin,
- then became unfaithful to the violin and started the piano.
- Then he became unfaithful to the piano and started composing.
- And I was amazed.
- He had piles and piles of compositions, and among them,
- a concerto in D major for violin and piano.
- And I, as far as I know, am the only person
- who ever performed it, again, quote, "in public," unquote.
- It was at my class at the Jewish high school.
- What did you study specifically with Haas?
- Well, he was teaching us what you now
- would call music training, music appreciation.
- Not theory, and composition, and such?
- No, not really.
- How was he as a teacher?
- He did have his difficulties.
- He was a very devoted teacher.
- But he had to teach a class devoid of any discipline.
- So he had to spend a lot of time by shouting and yelling
- at the class, and please, be silent, and please,
- do follow along.
- Were these music students or general students?
- No, no, general.
- Oh, it was a general appreciation course.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Had you any opportunity to hear any of his music in Brno
- before that?
- No.
- No.
- I knew that the opera "The Charlatan" was on the program.
- And they were planning to read.
- But this was, of course, made impossible by, first,
- the Sudeten crisis in '38 and then
- the occupation of Czechoslovakia.
- So it was inconceivable that a work by a Jewish composer
- should be performed in public.
- But I was very, very impressed by the fact
- that the man had written an opera.
- I, in my childish imagination, thought
- that composing operas was a thing of the past
- and that it no longer happened.
- And now, I was seeing in the flesh, so to say,
- a person who had composed an opera,
- and an opera that was accepted by a stage.
- Let's go back to Terezín now.
- When you came, and you found you had the ability
- to play a little bit on some borrowed instruments,
- and you began some study for a certain period
- with Karl Frohlich, how and when were you
- aware of any performances going on early in 1942?
- If you speak of musical performances,
- there were some more or less illegal
- recitals on a piano left behind by the original inhabitants
- of Terezín.
- And the people who performed were Bernard Kaff and Gideon
- Klein, to my knowledge.
- And I heard Kaff perform and was very, very impressed,
- although I thought that the piano was
- an inferior instrument, and the violin
- was the king of instruments.
- But his rendition-- I guess it was a Beethoven sonata--
- was very, very impressive.
- Was this on this now famous, also from the drawing,
- grand piano without legs?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- In the other, which they said that Gideon Klein managed
- to somehow restore it to be able to it.
- What was the feeling in this concert
- by the people attending?
- After all, it was still at a certain risk.
- They took it very lightly--
- the risk, I mean.
- And the people who were willing to listen to a recital
- on an attic which was unheated in winter
- and very, very hot in summer were really musical idealists
- who didn't give a damn.
- They were fascinated by the music.
- And somehow, one of the first things
- I remember-- it's not chronologically correct,
- but there was a performance of Smetana's "Bartered Bride"
- were accompanied by a harmonium.
- And Bernard Kaff told me then, look, it was far from perfect.
- But it was a true triumph of mind over matter.
- And this is something that is true about the whole cultural
- life in Theresienstadt, which, of course, didn't
- consist of music only.
- Sure.
- There were very, very interesting lectures,
- from simple descriptions of the landscapes
- of the USA to the highly involved theory of currencies
- and things like that.
- For instance, my father, who was an excellent mathematician,
- attended a course of higher mathematics.
- So yeah, then there were--
- lectures were-- Greek classics were quoted
- in the original language.
- So it was an incredibly wide prism
- of cultural possibilities.
- And I guess that the little place, Theresienstadt,
- would easily beat in quantity and quality
- of a big city like Düsseldorf.
- Did you attend any music lectures?
- Ullmann lectured.
- And James Simon from Berlin lectured.
- Yeah, James Simon once accompanied me
- in the coffeehouse.
- He did?
- I was playing Beethoven, a romance in F major.
- And I knew him from some books on musical history.
- And again, I was very impressed by seeing in the flesh
- a person mentioned by a textbook on musical history.
- How was he to play with?
- How was he as a musician and a composer?
- He was a very competent and understanding musician.
- Were you aware of any of his own music?
- No.
- No.
- No.
- Then the physician, Kurt Singer, was lecturing
- on symbolism in music.
- And he used-- again, it was a very wide, wide scope,
- a very wide perspective.
- He talked about symbolism in music.
- For instance, the bars of quavers in Bach's music,
- whenever the word cross appeared,
- formed a cross, which you couldn't hear,
- but you could see it in a score.
- And the phenomenon of symbolism in music even embraces,
- in his lectures, the phenomenon that the text of the libretto
- in an opera says, [GERMAN]--
- now calms come into my heart.
- But the orchestra is playing a tremolo.
- So the words are a deception.
- And the orchestra reveals the true nature
- of what's going on in the protagonists or so.
- Right.
- Even disturbance underneath.
- Yeah.
- Did you hear Ullmann lecture?
- No, I don't think so.
- It's documented that he gave a lecture on anthroposophy
- in music.
- He gave a lecture on Mahler's first symphony.
- No, I didn't hear that.
- What I did hear was Dr. Karel Reiner's lecture
- on "Ma Vlast," "My Fatherland," by Smetana.
- And he explained to us why in the first piece,
- "Vysehrad," he was using the interval of a fourth instead
- of a third, which would have sounded much more intimate.
- And you could alter it chromatically.
- And it would, quote, "be much more interesting," unquote.
- But that Smetana knew perfectly well why he chose the fourth.
- I was very impressed.
- And yeah, I had lessons in theory of music
- with a blind musician from either Dachau--
- not the concentration camp.
- He was born at the place known as Dachau.
- And he was, until 1933, teaching in music acoustics
- for musicians.
- And he was a genius as a theoretician.
- I have never heard any of his music.
- What was his name?
- Hans Neumeyer.
- Neumeyer.
- And the theory lessons went like this--
- he would give you some homework to do.
- He would dictate to you a melody.
- And you were supposed to do the chords.
- Or he would give you a baseline.
- And you were supposed to fill in the harmonic structure.
- And again, I took lessons with him in counterpoint.
- And the homework, I wasn't able-- we had access
- to a harmonium later.
- But I was too clumsy to play my homework.
- So I read it to him.
- And it didn't matter to him whether I read it vertically,
- giving him the components of each chord,
- or whether I read the melodic lines, the soprano, alto,
- tenor, and bass.
- So he was a very, very brilliant person
- with a musical intelligence that went far beyond my imagination.
- Was the payment for these lessons also a piece of bread?
- Either a slice of bread or a bowl of soup.
- Now, where did you get this bread?
- Where did you get a bowl of soup to take?
- Did you go without your portion in order
- to pay for the lessons?
- Sometimes, I did.
- But in most cases, I didn't.
- And my father, somehow, got hold of bread.
- What was some organizing.
- Yeah, but I still don't know how he did it.
- Later, the already mentioned opera singer,
- Herbert Lowenberg, and my father became friends.
- And Lowenberg would contribute some food.
- And I remember, one time, my father
- had forgotten to report with the ghetto polizei
- to show his pass for leaving the building.
- And in the Tagesbefehl, order of the day, my father
- was mentioned that as a punishment,
- a bread ration would be confiscated.
- And at that time, we had plenty of bread
- because all the friends contributed, which was--
- the sum total of the bread was bigger
- than the confiscated ration.
- During this period, how long did your
- lessons, and with what frequency-- once a week
- or whenever?
- Once a week.
- Not only with him, but with Karl Frohlich how long
- did your violin lessons go?
- Once a week for a great number of months.
- Did you hear him perform--
- Yes, quite.
- --as a soloist?
- Yeah, quite frequently.
- He played the Bach E major concerto,
- being accompanied by the symphonic string orchestra
- conducted by Karel Ancerl.
- And I was playing in the orchestra as well.
- That would have been in '43, I think.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
- That was in '43.
- In '42, there is a program that he gave a recital accompanied
- on accordion by Wolfi Lederer.
- No, I didn't hear that.
- You didn't hear that?
- No.
- He played the Kreutzer sonata accompanied by accordion.
- Yeah, I did hear the Kreutzer sonata,
- but already accompanied by piano.
- Ferenc Weisz was accompanying.
- And he was a Hungarian Jew who had been caught by the Nazis
- in Holland in the Netherlands.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Did you know of a man who must have been in his 60s
- by then from Prague named Hugo Lowenthal?
- No.
- No.
- In 1942, he wrote a kind of potpourri of Jewish holiday
- songs for violin and accordion.
- And I assume that still in June '42,
- pianos were very scarce, except perhaps
- for the piano up in the attic?
- Yeah, this is the truth.
- And this is the reason that the accordion was used so much.
- But you weren't aware of that?
- No, no.
- Did you hear Frohlich and his quartet, this quartet?
- Yes, I did.
- Yeah.
- It was an admirable quartet.
- And their intonation was so incredibly precise.
- I was very fond of listening to their rehearsals.
- And one day, I remember, they couldn't
- agree which of them was deviating in his intonation.
- And then they found out that in the voices, one of them
- had a C sharp and the other a D flat.
- So they really made a difference between the two things.
- And being faithful interpreters, they
- found out they were not in accord.
- And they started arguing until they found out
- what was the reason of this deviation.
- Now, by when did it become, so to speak,
- legal for the instruments there?
- That was a very vague and gliding process.
- I remember, one day, in--
- I guess it was in '43, Ancerl appeared at the Magdeburg
- kaserne, at the Magdeburg barracks,
- asking whether I would be interested in playing
- in the symphonic string orchestra.
- I already was in possession of a violin, which belonged
- to the coffeehouse orchestra.
- And of course, I said, yes.
- And legalizing music was something
- that didn't have a precise date, to my knowledge.
- Because it-- was it-- did it become officially
- condoned by the Freizeitgestaltung?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- It suddenly appeared on the programs
- of the Freizeitgestaltung.
- Now, did you hear a--
- we spoke of hearing them rehearse, or the intonation
- problems, and so on.
- Were you present at any actual concert?
- Yes, I was.
- Yeah.
- Did you, by chance, hear a concert--
- there is a program printed, but without a date.
- They played a Beethoven quartet, a Brahms quartet,
- and what would have been the world
- premiere of Gideon Klein's fantasy and fugue written
- for them.
- I wonder if that program you heard.
- No, I didn't.
- Or did you hear, for example--
- this was already in '44.
- Were you still there in '44?
- Yes.
- There, in the week between the 14th to the 20th of February
- '44, Gideon and three members of the quartet
- did piano quartets of Brahms and Dvorak.
- Yeah, I did hear that.
- You did hear that?
- Yeah.
- Again, I was struck by how brilliantly they played.
- Yes.
- There was also a performance of, I think,
- the Brahms B major trio and the Archduke trio
- with Pavel Kling playing the violin and Gideon on the piano.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I did hear that.
- And Freddie Mark, The cellist from Brno.
- Yeah, yeah.
- This must have been wonderful chamber music.
- It was absolutely perfect chamber music.
- And all three musicians are--
- were brilliant.
- I especially admired Freddie Mark,
- who was a gigantic cellist.
- Had you known Pablo in Brno?
- Because he must have been the same age, more or less.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, he is, I guess, two years younger than I.
- I met him privately at his father's place.
- His father was a medical doctor and had
- studied musical composition with Dvorak.
- And he-- I remember still that he told us
- that Dvorak was a teacher with terrible nerves.
- And when he, Dr. Kling, failed to fulfill
- some of his expectations, Dvorak would throw a plate of soup
- at his student and then regret it and beg for forgiveness.
- And I didn't mean it, my dear friend.
- And he, of course, was very proud of Pavel playing his son.
- And he accompanied him on the piano, which his accompaniment
- wasn't very good.
- But he did his best to support his son.
- And I remember, it must have been 1940 or '41 that we
- came to Dr. Kling's house.
- And then we, my father and I, met Pavel Kling.
- And he played.
- I don't remember what it was, but I was very, very impressed.
- He was younger than me, but he was
- by far the superior violinist.
- And I immediately made up my mind
- that the next thing I would study
- would be the Beethoven B major concerto, which I never
- finished because we were sent to Terezín, to Theresienstadt.
- Let me ask another kind of program,
- as you heard in Terezín.
- Viktor Ullmann organized the Studio fur neue Musik.
- And one program was devoted to works of interest [INAUDIBLE]..
- Another program was Mahler, and Schoenberg, and Bruno Walter,
- even, a composition.
- But there was one program, number two in the series,
- which was called Jungen Autoren in Theresienstadt.
- And it had works by Gideon Klein, songs and texts of
- [? Tikin, ?] piano pieces by Heinz Alt, Karel Berman's
- Poupata song cycle, and two works
- by Zikmund Schul, two Hasidic dances for two strings.
- Yeah, I vaguely remember the Hasidic dances.
- You heard that program, perhaps?
- I guess I did.
- And I once met Schul.
- And I think the person who introduced
- us was Dr. Hans Gunther Adler, the man who
- wrote the very, very profound book Theresienstadt--
- Antlitz einer Zwansgemeinschaft, Theresienstadt--
- The Face of an Involuntary or Forced Community.
- And the way Adler and I met was quite romantic.
- I was practicing clandestinely at the Sudeten Kaserne,
- at a place which usually served for peeling potatoes.
- But there-- at that time, nobody was there.
- So I went in with my violin.
- And I was quite thrilled because I was used to my mute violin.
- And suddenly, I had a beautiful violin.
- And I was playing in a home, which
- consisted of stone and wood, with a huge resonance.
- So as I was quite drunk, intoxicated by the sound,
- and suddenly, someone knocked at the door.
- And Adler came in.
- And I was practicing the Beethoven concerto.
- And without introducing himself, he simply
- told me, no, there should be an accent
- on the G. With Beethoven, you shouldn't be afraid
- of accents, of sudden accents.
- And I grasped, this must be a man
- who knows a lot about music.
- And much later, he introduced himself.
- And he had studied, which is a comparatively little-known
- fact, musicology at the University of Prague.
- And he knew a lot about music.
- Of course, later, in other fields, more--
- Sure, right.
- --prevalent.
- But he still had a great understanding of music.
- And a friendship developed, which started as, again,
- a course.
- He taught me history of music.
- But history of music was only one of the many subjects
- we talked about, about German poetry, and classical,
- or the spirit of classical art, and romantic art,
- and romanticism in music, and things-- and philosophy.
- So it was a gigantic horizon he opened up for me.
- Yes, of course.
- And I was a very grateful student.
- And the friendship practically lasted until his death.
- Could you elaborate a little more on your meeting
- with Zikmund Schul?
- Did you have conversations with him?
- Yeah.
- I'm sorry, I don't remember much.
- I was optically impressed by a person that,
- to me, at that time, looked like the typical ascetic artist,
- the person who--
- this is a typically romantic concept, the suffering artist,
- who produces something really sublime.
- He was 10 years older than you?
- Yeah, which at that age, is a gigantic difference.
- Of course, that was.
- 16 or 26 is the difference between a child and a grown-up.
- Pavel Kling, of course, played in that concert
- in which Zikmund's two Hasidic dances were performed.
- And the work, which, of course, you heard as well
- was called "Divertimento Ebraico."
- But unfortunately, that score was lost.
- I neglected to ask you about the quartet of [? Abram ?]
- [? Levitch. ?]
- Yeah, I did.
- [? Abram ?] [? Levitch ?] Quartet was one of the first
- musical events I remember.
- It was still an illegal performance.
- And they played-- they must have played more things.
- But the thing I remember was Dvorak's American quartet
- in F major.
- And I was deeply impressed.
- I heard them much later.
- And my dear friend, Hans [PERSONAL NAME]
- who was originally a violinist, and again,
- became unfaithful to the violin and started composing,
- told me that the [? Levitch ?] Quartet has totally
- succumbed to the spirit of Antonin Dvorak, which
- was praise and scorn in one sentence, so to say.
- Did you hear?
- He composed one known piece in Terezín, a gavotte.
- Yeah, I did hear it.
- You heard it?
- Yeah.
- And did you hear the piece, which was written for him, also
- in 1942, by [INAUDIBLE],, "The Need on the Volta,"
- and they did the premiere in the attic?
- Well, this I cannot truthfully answer.
- I know [? Tomas ?] [? Lipsky ?] well because he was playing
- at the Coffeehouse Orchestra on the violin.
- He was my colleague at the Coffeehouse Orchestra.
- And we played some of his music.
- And I realized he was a person who was very, very talented
- to invent convincing melodies.
- Melodic logic was his forte.
- Yes.
- Did you hear any of the choral concerts, the Subak Choir,
- the Durra, Choir, the Fischer Choir?
- Yeah.
- The Fischer Choir I have in very bad memory
- because I was practicing at the Magdeburg barracks.
- And they were having a rehearsal there.
- And they antagonized my violin.
- So I was very mad.
- They were practicing something out of Mascagni.
- Cavalleria,
- Cavalleria, that's right.
- That's his poster.
- Yeah.
- And were you present at any concerts or rehearsals
- of choirs which were conducted by Rafi Schachter?
- No, except "The Bartered Bride" by--
- I wouldn't know.
- And he conducted "La Serva Padrona"
- by this Italian composer.
- Oh, "La Serva Padrona."
- Italy.
- I know it as well.
- It suddenly-- it escapes me.
- What about vocal concerts, recitals by singers?
- Had [BOTH TALKING]
- Yeah, I knew them.
- But yeah, I wasn't much interested in vocal music,
- played vocal music.
- I was a fan of instrumental music.
- Later, I lost my prejudices about the violin
- being the only valuable instrument.
- And I recognized that I'd been a fool.
- But still, I was a fanatic for instrumental music.
- Did you hear the performance at which
- Karel Ancerl played, apparently, second viola of the Schubert
- quintet?
- And the Brahms sextet?
- Yeah, yeah.
- I remember.
- And I admired Ancerl that he was able to play an instrument
- and conduct brilliantly.
- And it's a little-known fact that Gideon Klein was a really
- accomplished conductor.
- He once conducted the symphonic string orchestra.
- He conducted the study for strings by Pavel Haas.
- Gideon conducted it?
- Yeah.
- Really?
- In one of the rehearsals just for fun.
- And he did it brilliantly.
- Parts of it are polyrhythmic.
- Yes.
- And he did it smoothly, elegantly.
- Haas must have been present at the rehearsals of that piece.
- Not at all the rehearsals, some.
- Did he have any comments to make other than obviously
- [BOTH TALKING}
- No.
- No, no, he was just sitting there and listening.
- And you could see the concentration on his face.
- What was the experience of sitting
- in this extraordinary, surrealistic environment
- and having absolutely, in many cases, professional rehearsals
- of chamber music and orchestral music going on?
- How did these things combine in your consciousness
- as your own person?
- Look, I was a very defiant prisoner.
- And I had the idea that I would do a maximum of practicing
- and, on the very first day of our liberation, give a recital.
- That was my idea of a trial.
- So I was fully aware of the absurdity of the situation,
- living under conditions which an animal wouldn't have endured,
- and playing music to--
- and not only music, theater and opera as well--
- to the point of absolute perfection.
- And combinations between reality, our reality,
- the Theresienstadt reality.
- And the text, for instance, of the Fledermaus
- by Johann Strauss was very obvious to me,
- for instance, where the prison warden, Frosch, addresses
- his prisoner by saying, Mr. Prisoner.
- And the SS address him as [NON-ENGLISH]..
- Sorry, I heard the--
- or I remember the performance of Fledermaus
- with Wolfi Lederer conducting from the harmonium
- the whole thing by heart.
- I really admired him.
- Tell me a bit about Wolfi Lederer.
- Wolfi Lederer was the product of what you may call light music.
- He was, I guess, a piano player at a nightclub
- with a genuine love of classical music.
- And that's one of the reasons, for instance,
- when he was playing chamber music that he
- was more classical than all the people who were classical,
- so to say, by origin.
- He was very strict, very formal, but very, very, very musical.
- He's the one who, I think I mentioned earlier, of course,
- did the Kreutzer sonata on the accordion
- before there was a piano.
- Yeah, yeah.
- He was a person of great talent.
- And I understand he survived.
- And he worked in Turkey after the war.
- Yes.
- He lives in Seattle, Washington.
- He lives in Seattle?
- I spoke to him recently.
- It's only recently that I found out.
- And I received a cassette of a jazz evening that he did.
- In Seattle?
- Well, no, I think it was in the East Coast.
- But it's very, very good.
- But in the United States?
- Yes.
- He's called, I guess, for years now Peter, Peter Lederer.
- But it's him.
- It's not Wolfi anymore?
- No, but it's the same person.
- It's the same person?
- Yeah.
- I'm hoping to hear from him.
- Speaking of this direction of this lighter music,
- I have met, of course, Martin Roman,
- who we spoke of a bit earlier.
- Yeah.
- And also--
- The last time I heard or saw Martin Roman was in Auschwitz,
- where amid--
- you said something about a surrealistic situation.
- Yeah, he was saying that Theresienstadt
- was tame in comparison to Auschwitz.
- And in that truly surrealistic milieu, I suddenly heard music.
- And I thought I was hallucinating.
- But it was something like a very small orchestra,
- wind orchestra.
- And Martin Roman was part of that orchestra.
- And they were playing to the work gangs that were
- being marched out of the camp.
- Yes.
- He told me he had to arrange marches in this way.
- Yeah, they were playing marches.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- But speaking of light music, I loved listening
- to the ghetto singers.
- And I remember that the ghetto singers were doing a medley
- from Hans Krása's Brundibár.
- And Krása came to one of the rehearsals
- and stood there, shaking his head
- and admiring the orchestra because they had a very refined
- way of changing the rhythm, and sometimes, the intonation,
- and introducing glissandi.
- There were no glissandi in the original.
- Yes, of course.
- And I guess it was Fritz Weiss, the clarinet
- player, who arranged this.
- And I, being an admirer of jazz music,
- was once asked to try to play something jazzy, which I did.
- And it was--
- I still remember, it was the song [NON-ENGLISH]----
- "Alone with a Girl in the Rain."
- And I played it with my variations.
- And they laughed and said, Tommy, Papa Haydn Wood
- couldn't have done it better.
- Yes.
- And I admire that, for instance, Paul Cohen
- was an accomplished trumpet player and a very good
- classical cellist.
- Right.
- Was he the brother of [? Viktor ?] Cohen?
- Yes.
- It was a whole family of musicians.
- Yes.
- Their father, old Mr. Cohen, played the string bass.
- In Terezín?
- Yeah.
- And Pavel Cohen's wife, who was a very lovely person,
- was originally a pianist.
- And when Jews were no longer allowed to own a piano,
- she secretly learned the clarinet.
- And she was a née Katz.
- And we joked, you wanted to get rid of the Jewish name of Katz.
- And that's why you married Cohen.
- Did you know Cohen personally?
- Pavel Cohen?
- Yeah-- ah, no, Viktor.
- Yes.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Yes, because there's only one composition of his
- which is known.
- It's a praeludium on the name of "Edelstein" for a string
- quartet.
- I don't know if it was performed in the ghetto--
- I don't know.
- --at all.
- That reminds me, there's another piece,
- which Karel Frohlich, after the war, in the '70s
- said that he remembered performing.
- And that was Hans Krása's "Theme and Variations
- for String Quartet."
- And the theme was Hannah's song from incidental music
- that he composed to Adolf Hoffmeister's play, "Youth
- in the Game" in 1945.
- I wonder if, by chance, you've heard that word.
- No, no.
- Yes.
- Tell me a bit about Hans Krása.
- Hans Krása was the typically elegant man, an artist
- who smiled at most things.
- And I remember his conversation with the pianist [? Juliette ?]
- [? Harani, ?] who was a very lovely person and a very gifted
- pianist.
- And she made a remark, isn't it sad?
- Now, I've been living for a year in Theresienstadt
- and I haven't slept with a man.
- And I was listening with great interest.
- And Krása told to me, Tommy, you should
- wonder how to get from C major into D major,
- how to modulate, and not listen to things unfit for your ears.
- And he was a great maestro of ironical wit.
- Did you hear any of his music performed in the ghetto,
- including perhaps "Brundibár?"
- Yeah, "Brundibár," I knew well, of course.
- But other things-- he wrote two string trios.
- I guess one of them, I must have heard.
- One was a dance, and one was using
- some of the same melodic material of Passacaglia
- and Fugue.
- That was in 1944.
- It's quite possible, but I don't remember.
- Did you, by chance, in April '44 hear Karel Berman's recital
- in which he introduced the Chinese songs [BOTH TALKING]
- Yeah, I remember that.
- And again, I was very impressed by Haas
- because I knew his study for strings, was it?
- And I somehow understood that he must be an all-round composer.
- Yes, yes.
- There is a work, unfortunately lost,
- but Bernard Kaff played his cortita for solo piano.
- Yeah.
- I remember Kaff was telling me that he was practicing it.
- Kaff, at one time, was tsar Alteste,
- elder of the so-called living quarters.
- And he sat behind his desk.
- And all the time, he was memorizing music.
- Now, another kind of music that we haven't talked about yet,
- and I'm curious if you were aware of or heard,
- is, of course, cabaret--
- the Czech cabarets of Karel Svenk and the German cabaret,
- "Karussell," which was done by Martin Roman and Kurt Gerron.
- Of Kurt Gerron.
- Did you?
- Yeah.
- I still remember the German cabaret, the "Karussell."
- and Kurt Gerron looked to me like something
- out of the "Beggar's Opera."
- And he looked like a mixture of Rascal and Saint
- because he would perform for nothing for old people, who
- could no longer move about.
- And he did it, really, with only one purpose,
- to make them happy for a couple of minutes.
- Did you hear him sing the [INAUDIBLE] of [? Hilzen ?]
- and [BOTH TALKING]
- Yeah, I did hear that.
- And it was a very convincing rendition.
- Did he do it, I imagine--
- I'm familiar with the recordings of him in the '30s.
- And I can imagine that he didn't do it all in normal bel canto,
- but semi-speaking.
- No, no.
- Yeah, [GERMAN],, something like that.
- Yes, yes, yes.
- Did you by chance hear another one that he evidently also--
- well, it was written for him-- all of them, of course,
- by Martin--
- [GERMAN]?
- I don't remember that.
- That was a text, I think, either by Neil Strauss or Manfred
- [PERSONAL NAME] And Martin told me
- that the pieces that they performed for the film
- included the "Bugle Call Rag," the "Tiger Rag,"
- and the "Karussell" song itself.
- But I had never heard until now, and I'm so pleased to hear,
- that they did an arrangement of [? Fritzy ?]
- Weiss of the "Wunderbar" music.
- That's fascinating.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- I didn't know that at all.
- I mentioned to you the other day,
- and I'd like, really, to hear whatever you have to remember
- about Robert Dauber.
- He was also--
- A very--
- --close to your age.
- --gifted-- yeah, gifted cellist who
- was playing at the coffeehouse orchestra.
- And we planned to form a trio with the pianist [? Neto, ?]
- who was primarily a jazz pianist,
- but interested in classical music.
- But it never materialized because we all
- were deported to--
- no, [? Neto ?] was, for reasons unknown to me,
- taken to the Kleine Festung small fortress
- and murdered there.
- What was his first name?
- I haven't heard it.
- [? Mirko ?] [? Neto. ?]
- [? Mirko ?] [? Neto. ?]
- [? Mirko ?] [? Neto. ?] I don't know what the accusation,
- if any, was.
- And Dauber and I were deported to Auschwitz so.
- Now, in, 1942, there's a postcard
- that Robert wrote to his parents.
- Adolph Dauber, of course, was very well known.
- And he said that I'm playing in the Stadtkapelle.
- And we're playing in the music pavilion,
- I mean, an orchestra with 40 men.
- This cannot have been '42.
- No?
- No, because the Stadtkapelle was, I guess,
- started performing in '43, I guess.
- But he says, in a short time, my serenade will be performed.
- And this serenade is a very, very beautiful and sentimental
- piece for violin and piano.
- You don't recall having heard it or known about it?
- No, no, no.
- It's the only piece of music by him which survives.
- There was, by the way, another young man,
- named [? Jiri ?] [? Kuhlemann-- ?]
- Yeah, I knew him.
- --from whom there's one string quartet piece.
- So it did survive.
- Because I mentioned this name to Joza Karas,
- who wrote the book music in Terezín.
- And he told me that the name sounded completely unfamiliar.
- And now, I'm learning that something survived.
- This was the piece, the one-movement piece
- of a quartet.
- And speaking of young people who vanished,
- the son of a medical doctor from Vienna, Georg [PERSONAL NAME]
- was a violinist who studied with Heinrich Taussig.
- And he was a very gifted violinist,
- playing the [INAUDIBLE] G major concerto.
- And he was sent to Auschwitz.
- And he, of course, his father was immediately
- murdered in Auschwitz because he was an elderly gentleman.
- And naturally, Georg was very depressed.
- And I tried to cheer him up.
- And I still remember when one of the SS troopers
- started shooting at one of the prisoners.
- I said to him, [GERMAN],, which is a quotation
- from the Fledermaus.
- And he looked at me in amazement and said, Tommy,
- I don't know how long I've been here.
- But I've never smiled.
- But now I can smile.
- And I found out much later that he was deported from Auschwitz
- to Dachau.
- And in the extermination camp, Dachau-Kaufering-I, one,
- I found out that Georg [PERSONAL NAME] had been there,
- but died of typhoid fever.
- What contact did you have, either personally or in hearing
- his music, of Viktor Ullmann?
- I had quite a good personal contact.
- Both were in connection with his music and his personality.
- Victor Ullmann and my father were almost friends
- because both of them had been members
- at the anthroposophical society.
- And I had very many conversations with Ullmann
- on music.
- And being the rebellious kid I was, I would say things like,
- tonality is a thing of the past.
- And he'd say, Tommy, how can you say such a thing?
- Such a subtle organism as tonality, and you
- simply dismiss it as something belonging to the past.
- Or I would say, counterpoint is a toy for fools.
- Really good composers didn't use it,
- like Beethoven in his concerto.
- And he told me, look, can you sing or whistle to me
- the main theme?
- Which I did, and said, Tommy you're
- fighting against your own positions.
- It's a feat of counterpoint.
- It looks like a scale, but it basically is.
- And he explained why.
- But he would talk about other things
- too, about architecture, and philosophy, and anthroposophy.
- And he had-- which is a little-known fact,
- a very good sense of humor.
- Oh, I was going to ask that.
- Yes.
- And he sometimes would say, if I were a German professor, I'd
- say, [GERMAN].
- So I must do some little research
- having 15 minutes left.
- So I'd say, I have to do some composing.
- Did you hear any of his music performed?
- I was a member of the little orchestra that
- was performing the stage music for [INAUDIBLE] ballads, which
- were performed on stage.
- And the music was by Victor Ullmann.
- Yes.
- And it continued a violin too.
- And that was me.
- And so I was able to reconstruct for the Swedish Kulturhuset
- the pirate song from the [INAUDIBLE]..
- Which, when you related this to Ingo Schulze, of course,
- he printed it--
- Yeah, yeah.
- --in that book?
- In his book.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Were you aware of or in attendance at the rehearsals,
- if you were still there in September
- '44, of the Kaiser von Atlantis?
- Yeah.
- I didn't play in the orchestra, but I
- listened to the rehearsals.
- And I was greatly impressed, especially
- by the main theme played at that part of the score by the oboe.
- And I recognized the music when I heard it again
- in the late '80s on TV.
- The oboe, you refer to?
- No, the theme.
- Or the trumpet?
- [VOCALIZING]
- No, no, it was something something.
- Oh, it's just after the prologue.
- Yeah.
- In Terezín, it was played by the oboe.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- There's a banjo accompaniment in eighth notes.
- And suddenly, it runs away from me.
- But I know exactly what it is.
- The saxophone comes in.
- It's the first intermezzo immediately after the prologue
- and before the [INAUDIBLE] begin their duet.
- I recognize the music, which is an incredibly powerful argument
- in favor of this music.
- Because if you have heard a thing once or twice
- and recognize it after decades, it cannot be better.
- Did you hear enough in hearing the rehearsals
- to be aware of a number of quotations?
- No.
- No?
- No.
- No.
- Because his seventh piano sonata,
- which was not performed in Terezín,
- is also full of all kinds of quotations,
- including from his own music.
- And one person who heard it in the '80s in Munich
- said, if we had heard that there, we
- would have gone crazy because of the symbolic significance
- of these various quotations that we heard.
- Well, we could go on, and on, and on.
- Are there any other things which stand out very strongly
- of the musical life in your memory?
- Yeah.
- By the way, I remember now the composers name of "La Serva
- Padrona," it was Pergolesi.
- Of course.
- Of course, of course.
- And look, one of the great sorrows to me, personally, is--
- and this is only words to any listener--
- the music by Heinz Rosensweig.
- I even now recall the main theme of his concerto for violin.
- And I still insist that he is a composer was a genius.
- And not one single note of music has survived.
- He was deported to some extermination camp
- even before Auschwitz was functioning.
- He was deported, I guess, in April '42,
- together with his mother.
- And his father and his brother were
- living in the Soviet Union, escaped there, and vanished
- without a trace too.
- The name, I don't know.
- So the whole family vanished as if they had never lived.
- And there are so--
- look, there was that poet--
- he doesn't belong to our conversation,
- so to say-- but Georg Kafka.
- He was a distant relative of Franz Kafka.
- His poetry hasn't survived.
- I had a very dear friend who worked
- with me in one of the work groups in Dachau-Kaufering-III.
- His name was Hans [? Goldman. ?] He was a very talented poet.
- His poetry has not survived.
- And he died in Kaufering thereabout.
- I think at least one poem is printed in Adler's book.
- Yeah, you are right.
- Yeah, one poem.
- Yes.
- He's a cousin of the pianist who recorded the fifth and seventh
- sonatas on our first CD, Robert [? Goldman, ?]
- who lives in Munich.
- And it's actually Robert's, I think,
- brother for whom he played the seventh sonata in '85.
- And he got so excited.
- He said, if we only had heard this music.
- Tell me, the last work of Gideon was, of course, a string trio.
- And it was completed nine days before he
- went on the transport, on October 16.
- Did you-- one person, Elisa Schiller, who was here,
- said that she remembers hearing it.
- Did you hear it?
- No.
- I didn't hear it.
- No.
- No.
- Well, did you, by chance--
- I didn't ask that.
- Did you know the singer Walter [? Windmiller? ?]
- I don't remember the name.
- You don't remember.
- Because on one of his recitals, there's
- three songs of Hans Krása, which should
- have been the [? Rambo ?] songs with clarinet, viola,
- and cello.
- But there's so many things.
- Did you hear Edith Kraus perform?
- Yes, I did hear her.
- Which concert might that have been?
- It was the concert in the hall, where
- the so-called bank was working.
- And she was a wonderful pianist.
- And I did hear Hertz, the pianist.
- Alice Hertz.
- Alice Sommer Hertz, playing "Les Adieux" by Beethoven.
- Oh, really?
- Edith gave an old Bach program.
- She gave a mixed program, which included
- Bach's chromatic fantasy and fugue
- and a number of other works.
- She played the Mendelssohn early sonata, which Victor wrote
- a wonderful review, and he said, one
- could imagine the young Mendelssohn herself playing.
- But she gave an astonishing recital,
- which began with Schumann's "Christ Liliana,"
- then had the world premiere, at his request,
- of his sonata number six and the Brahms F minor sonata.
- You would remember if you had heard it--
- Yeah, I don't think I did.
- --for sure.
- For sure.
- I remember two other piano recitals, one by Bernard Kaff,
- playing, among other things, Beethoven's "Waldstein" sonata
- with incredible virtuosity, the eighth.
- And I remember Carlo Taube, who had been a Busoni student.
- And he hadn't been playing the piano seriously because he
- had somehow to make a living.
- And he played in nightclubs.
- In Theresienstadt, he found his way back to classical music.
- And he played the Liszt sonata.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Those programs of his were printed also
- from the orchestra of the Freizeitgestaltung.
- But he also conducted the Stadtkapelle orchestra.
- Did you play in the Stadtkapelle?
- Yeah, I did play.
- But I remember chiefly Peter Deutsch.
- Oh, I want to ask about Peter Deutsch
- because he chose and arranged the music for the background
- music for the propaganda film.
- And did you play--
- I know you played in the string orchestra of Ancerl.
- But did you also play in the orchestra conducted
- by Deutsch for the film?
- No, not for the film.
- I usually played under the baton of Peter Deutsch.
- Because one of the works that they performed
- parts of was the potpourri of Adolf Dauber
- called "Am Sabbat Abend."
- And it was Hasidic songs and a variety.
- Doesn't ring a bell.
- Where were you when you were performing before the cameras
- the Haas study?
- I thought it was absolutely worthless.
- I knew that the Germans had lost the war.
- And I assumed the film would vanish somewhere and be
- destroyed.
- I didn't pay much attention to it.
- And I've heard that many tried to walk away from the cameras
- if they could.
- I thought it was totally unimportant and uninteresting
- whether they did this film or not.
- It wouldn't change anything.
- There's one other work I'd like to ask,
- I'm always asking to see who, by chance, remembers
- such and such a piece.
- This was completed by Ullmann in July of '44.
- And it was a setting of 12 of the poems from Rilke's
- "Die Weise von Liebe."
- Yeah, I did hear that.
- --composed Cornet Christopher Rilke.
- Yeah.
- You heard it?
- I heard it.
- Did you?
- Please tell me as much as I remember of that.
- Rafi Schachter played.
- And the actor was, I think, Fritz Lerner
- or some [BOTH TALKING]
- That I-- I'm not familiar with names of the actors.
- I remember that it was a very, very impressive combination
- of words, impression, contents of the words, music.
- It was an absolutely convincing piece of art.
- And I remember, even, that the details, where in the poetry,
- it says, [GERMAN],, so you could hear that
- in the piano accompaniment.
- And of course, the changes of mood,
- where he describes the sudden attack at night.
- It was written with an incredible empathy
- and understanding of the poetry.
- I think it's one of his most beautiful work.
- Absolutely.
- Absolutely.
- Well, I'm very, very indebted to you
- and grateful for this conversation.
- Well, it was a pleasure and a very sad pleasure.
- Yes.
- But as always, interesting little bits and fragments
- come floating up from these memories,
- recesses and add very much to our picture.
- I did such an interview some years ago with Pavel Kling.
- Ah, good.
- And also, there were a lot of things
- that he remembered as well.
- So I will send you a transcript.
- Do it.
- I will send you a copy of the tape.
- And I don't know how much of the--
- actually, I can stop it now.
- [GERMAN]
- You know, I forgot to ask one thing.
- When did you leave Terezín?
- In September '44.
- September '44.
- And you went to Auschwitz?
- Yes, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
- And to a labor camp or something?
- I spent a short time in Auschwitz
- and then was deported to Dachau-Kaufering number III.
- And after the liberation, did music become your profession?
- Yes.
- And it had been all these years?
- Until '60, I was teaching at the conservatory
- in Ostrava, where my wife was teaching too.
- She is a concert pianist.
- And in 1960, I escaped through North Africa,
- which was a very, very rough thing to do.
- And eight months later, I managed,
- with the help of the writer Heinrich Boll,
- to have her smuggled out of Czechoslovakia.
- And in '60?
- I escaped in '60 and she in '61.
- I see.
- I see.
- Something for the Guinness Book of Records.
- Yes, yes.
- How would you say, maybe just a final summarizing, of--
- I mean, all survivors live with this day after day.
- And some sublimate it totally.
- And some speak about it almost professionally.
- And some vacillate a little bit in the middle.
- Yeah.
- But how would you say, in your post-war continuing
- career as a musician, what remained
- of the impact of your musical experience in Terezín
- as you went on in your musical life?
- I guess the knowledge that music is
- something infinitely precious.
- And even in Terezín, I knew Schopenhauer's word
- that music is something all art would like to be,
- that is the representation of the total reality within one
- homogeneous material.
- So that's-- and even says, if you could explain music
- to an alien coming from a different planet,
- you would have explained the total of our earthly reality
- to him.
- And Terezín, somehow, proved that this is true.
- And I'm no longer a violin chauvinist.
- But I am a music chauvinist, although I make--
- I'm a writer now.
- And one final thing, I'm just very curious,
- how was it that-- and I assume it
- was after you escaped Czechoslovakia--
- that you went to Germany?
- That was part-- in a way, it was natural
- because my mother tongue is German.
- I was always tied up with German culture.
- And I finished the Academy of Music in Prague playing Bach,
- Beethoven, Brahms, which was very unusual at the time.
- And then, secondly, it was a matter of coincidence
- because from the penitentiary in Egypt,
- I was brought to a camp in Greece.
- And the American counter-intelligence people
- immediately said, you are not Thomas Mandl.
- You are a Soviet, a KGB agent.
- And we are not equipped for that kind of work.
- We will send you to Germany.
- And in Germany, my friend, whom I have already mentioned,
- Hans Günther Adler, had a friend who
- was head of the scientific department of the American
- Consulate General, Anton Calvelli-Adorno,
- a cousin of the philosopher.
- And we became friends and established contact
- with the writer Heinrich Boll.
- And then Heinrich Boll smuggled out my wife.
- And I found a job in Germany.
- I was working.
- I was first playing for the so-called Little
- Orchestra of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne.
- And then I became a member of the Czech desk of the Voice
- of Germany, Deutsche Welle.
- And we tried to settle down in the United States.
- Well, my wife did succeed.
- She became a teacher at Seattle University.
- Seattle University?
- Yeah.
- Great.
- That's where my wife was teaching, in the University
- of Washington in Seattle.
- I'm originally from Seattle.
- How very surprising.
- So she was teaching there.
- And you were in?
- I was working at Western State Hospital,
- which is an institution for the psychically ill.
- In Seattle?
- In Tacoma.
- Oh, in Tacoma.
- And doing all kinds of work, like group therapy, and that.
- Yes.
- But then when we were approaching 45,
- we came to the conclusion, we have to stop being adventurers.
- And we have to do something to earn a steady living.
- We did give recitals, and quite successfully.
- But this was not a steady income.
- And we had come to the conclusion, look,
- we have to do something.
- And at that time, there was a terrible shortage
- of teachers in Germany.
- And for some reason, we both landed at Catholic schools.
- My wife is a Catholic.
- But the more surprising thing is that I
- ended at a Catholic school.
- And I'm historically unique in that I'm
- the only Jewish violinist from Czechoslovakia who,
- by teaching English, has become a German public servant
- of the Catholic Church.
- Incredible.
- Incredible, incredible.
- Two final things-- one, you mentioned
- about being penitentiary in Egypt.
- And you might have mentioned it earlier,
- but somehow, it slipped me.
- Could you just say, why were you in prison?
- Yeah.
- I entered Egypt as a member of a tourist's group.
- And the whole group had one passport.
- When I jumped, when I left the group,
- I was there without a passport.
- And at that time, in Egypt, everything that was not clear
- was automatically sent to jail.
- Oh, I see.
- And from jail, I was sent to a penitentiary.
- And this was actually to escape?
- I mean, you were with a group of tourists as well.
- Yeah, well, with the idea to escape to escape.
- To escape, yes.
- Now, the other thing, and not related,
- you mentioned that one of your teachers, if I'm not mistaken,
- was Edward Weiss.
- Yeah.
- Was he in Terezín?
- Yeah.
- He was in Terezín.
- Could he also have been known as Evald Weiss? ?]
- No, no, Evald Weiss is somebody else.
- I knew both of them.
- OK.
- Because there's one cabaret song of [? Evald ?] [? Weiss. ?]
- Evald, yeah.
- So it's not Evald, I'm sorry.
- It's not the same person.
- No, it's not the same--
- Not the same person.
- --same person.
- Good, good.
- Edward Weiss was an old gentleman,
- a viola player from the Vienna Philharmonic,
- who even had composed an opera.
- [INAUDIBLE] was the name of the opera.
- I guess the material is lost.
- And the whole family must have perished
- because they were deported to Auschwitz in '42 or '43.
- And it's inconceivable that a person in his 70s
- could survive.
- OK.
- Good.
- I think now we will.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Tomas Mandel
- Date
-
interview:
1995 September 08
- Geography
-
creation:
Stockholm (Sweden)
- 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
- Mandel, Tomas.
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 09:37:25
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn558993
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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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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.