Music of Theresienstadt

The B’nai Sholom Synagogue, 949 10th Ave., will host a special concert called “Music from Theresienstadt” at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 11, featuring Marshall University professor of music and concertmaster for the Huntington Symphony Orchestra Elizabeth Reed Smith, violist Bernard Di Gregorio, cellist Andrea Di Gregorio from West Virginia Symphony’s Montclaire Quartet and mezzo-soprano Emily Capece, artistic director of womanSong chorale. The concert will feature music composed by Gideon Klein, Zigmund Schul, Viktor Ullmann, Hans Krasa and Ilse Weber who all died in the Holocaust.

The music was composed in Theresienstadt, also called by its Czech name Terezin, a Nazi ghetto in Czechoslovakia where prominent Jews, including artists, musicians and writers were sent from November 1941 to May 1945. Although there were no gas chambers in Theresienstadt, the ghetto served as a way station for Jews who were eventually deported to death camps and forced labor camps. It was also used as a propaganda tool by the Nazis, who allowed the prisoners to present performances and made a film of their activities. Many musical compositions survived, as did artwork and writings.