The Sandwich Democratic Town Committee

[Editor’s Note: These thoughts were originally published in The Lynn Item by Jim Walsh of Nahant, and is reproduced here as a service to readers of The Democratic Free Press. The Lynn Item noted that “The Nahant Historical Society sponsored this performance [to which Jim is referring below] in association with the Nahant Village Church and St. Thomas Aquinas Church.”]

For some of us the date November 22, 1963 is one we will never forget.  I was a young college student, walking out of class when I heard that John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.  I spent the next four days glued to the TV as did uncountable millions of others as those four days played out.  For other, older Americans,November 11, 1918 might be the November date to remember, marking an end to the four blood-soaked years of the First World War that took the lives of millions on Flanders Fields and beyond.

For still others, here and around the world, November 9 and 10, 1938 has deep significance as well.  On those days, the Nazi Party began its systematic assault on Jews throughout Germany, Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia.  It became known as kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and the pogrom would eventually culminate in places like Auschwitz and Treblinka…and Terezin.

Terezin (or Theresienstadt) was a special kind of concentration camp to which many artists—painters, composers, musicians, singers and others—were sent.  It served many purposes, for instance, as a work camp housing skilled workers valuable to the Nazis.  It was a dismal place, overcrowded, lacking adequate food, water and sanitation.  But, at first secretly, a vibrant underground cultural life came into being.  Children continued to be educated, composers composed, artists painted, singers sang.  At a certain point the Nazis saw a utility in all this.  Terezin became a “show camp.”  Both Danish and International Red Cross officials were brought to Terezin  and shown the benevolent policies of the Nazis toward the Jews.  A propaganda film was made showing this benevolent treatment of Jews that included the performance of an opera, with children’s chorus and a full orchestra.  Bows were taken.  There was applause.  It was all filmed.

Shortly after the lighting was dismantled and the film crews departed, virtually every single man, woman and child who took part in or saw that performance was shipped to Auschwitz and eventually exterminated.  That Children’s Chorus was never heard again.

Some years later, hidden in walls and in forgotten attics, poems and artwork was found, created by children and their teachers.  One child wrote:

go to the woods someday

And weave a wreath of memory there.

Then if the tears obscure your way
You’ll know how wonderful it is
To be alive.

What does one do in the face of such facts and memories?  What can be said?

On Sunday, November 10^th, the seventy-fifth anniversary of kristallnacht, music that was composed in Terezin was performed in the Nahant Village Church.  The composers–Gideon Klein, Paval Haas, Viktor Ullman and ZikmundSchul–did not survive nor did the musicians that first played their music there.  But the music itself, played by the Hawthorne String Quartet, all members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, performed, and in our hearts this art, through remembrance, has brought hope. No flame is eternal, not even the Sun’s, but in human terms there are some things that should not be forgotten.