'Forbidden Music' from Holocaust Draws Hundreds from Region

Just outside Prague in what is now the Czech Republic, Terezin or Theresienstadt, still stands, testament to the endless horrors Jewish people, homosexuals, Gypsies and others experienced under the Nazi regime.

In November 2000, during a trip to Prague, my family and I spent an afternoon touring Terezin and soaking in the darkness it still generates.

I cannot forget, nor would I want to, the gloomy gray rooms, the “hospital” where the sick never recovered, examination rooms with cement slabs for tables, isolation rooms of death.

Only room sizes changed. Every facility was dark, damp, depressing and disturbing.

Most of all, I recall the little museum at Terezin. Children’s suitcases, some with nametags still visible, little shoes and clothes, dolls and handmade toys of little ones who never grew up and passport photos of beautiful little faces that never would age.

Nazis constructed Terezin to isolate and imprison primarily Jewish Czech artists, writers, composers and scientist, remembered as some of the finest minds of the era.

Although most of the inmates’ creative works from Terezin did not survive the war, a few pieces did.

On Sunday, hundreds of South suburban and Northwest Indiana residents gathered at for Forbidden Music, including works from Theresienstadt. The program was part of the annual observance of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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Hans Krasa and Viktor Ullman, two Czech composers, were among the Terezin prisoners whose work survived the war. The men did not.

Krasa’s Tanec/Dance and Ullman’s String Quartet No. 3 were two of the program selections, powerful pieces with often-vibrant cadences. However, the notes sounded dark, at times foreboding and occasionally dissonant.

While music and other artistic forms of expression were allowed at Terezin, Rabbi Paul Caplan said that did not change the truth.

“The Nazis viewed the inmates as good as dead,” he said.

Only 10 percent of the 150,000 people sent to the Czech concentration camp survived the war.

I did not sleep much the two nights following my family's visit to Terezin. How could one rest after the intense and horrific sights?

Much of the Forbidden Music program sounded like the sights, dark and haunting.

Kaddish, the Jewish prayer honoring the dead, is not about death, but an affirmation of life. So too the Yom Hashoah program ended with a light on life, as two area residents shared an amazing story.

“On May 1, 1945, I was a 16-year-old girl on a death march (from the camps),” Homewood resident Julia Erdely, 82, told the audience.

“But General Patton and his men liberated us and gave me back the rest of my life. I light this candle with this dashing young man,” she said, turning to William Gresham of Bourbonnais. The audience chuckled, but with tears and admiration.

A young soldier in the U.S. Army in 1945, Gresham, now 88, is one of the men who rescued Erdley and so many others from the Bavaria death march and the death camps.

“Thank you for my life,” Erdely said as she smiled, her arm around Gresham.

Magda Rosh, Erdely’s daughter, also spoke.

Turning to Gresham, Roth said, “Thank you for my mother’s life, my life, my children’s and grandchildren’s lives.”

There was little else to say except the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer reaffirming life.