Rahm immediately summoned Kohn. He asked him if he really believed that the project was to build a gas chamber. Kohn replied that he did. Rahm then drew his revolver and kicked and punched Kohn repeatedly in front of the other workers.27
But when, later that day, the SS reported to Berlin the resistance in the ghetto, the building works, together with the ring-fencing of the plateau by the perimeter walls, were discontinued.28 Clearly the SS leadership were already feeling sufficiently insecure that they dared not proceed against their opponents as brutally as they had done even quite recently. After the war, when the commandant of the Little Fortress appeared before the courts, he admitted that Kohn’s suspicions were correct. Besides converting the building into a gas chamber, the ring-fenced plateau would be used to fence in thousands of prisoners before turning flame throwers on them and burning them alive.29 Had it not been for the courageous resistance of the ghetto building workers the SS might have choreographed a last, lethal dance of death.
The Melancholic: Op. 25 No. 7 in C sharp minor
The seventh study in C sharp minor is the only slow piece in the cycle, a moving elegy threaded through with pain and despair.
Arnošt Weiss, who was sitting in the audience for Alice’s performance, was head of the Works Department in the ghetto, a key role which had—so far—protected him from the transports.
Arnošt was a passionate chamber musician and evenings of chamber music were an essential part of his life, even after he was banished from his home town of Olmütz (Olomouc) in 1940. After he arrived in Prague, he soon struck up new friendships, with the violin teacher Erich Wachtel and with the Herz-Sommers. On the weekend they often played together in a quartet with Weiss on the viola, Alice’s brother Paul Herz on first violin, Leopold Sommer on second violin and Dr. Jóši Haas on the cello.30
Then, at Christmas 1941, the German authorities decreed that under the threat of the most severe penalties, all Jews had to hand over their musical instruments immediately. Then, a month later, on 27 January 1942 Arnošt Weiss, his wife and son had to report to the assembly point bearing the numbers 825, 826 and 827. There they spent three extremely cold nights on the floor of the unheated hall before they left for Theresienstadt. But even there he found solace in music. As a little boy he had been able to whistle almost any piece of music. In Theresienstadt he was able to bring this to true perfection:
In the camp I often went about whistling without really being conscious of what I was doing. Once in the lavatory an old man cried out to me: “Listen young man, do you know what you are whistling?” “Certainly,” I replied, “Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartet No. 1.” The man walked up to me with tears in his eyes and introduced himself as Freudenthal, a former member of the Berlin Philharmonic and more recently concert master of the Aussig Opera. He whistled the first violin part, and I whistled the other three instruments. That was my first experience of playing a string quartet in Theresienstadt.31
Arnošt Weiss survived Theresienstadt as chief of the Works Division. Decades later he wrote, “Poor children! Poor adults! There were a thousand Jews on Transport V. Only thirty-two adults and five children survived the terror regime of the Nazis.”32
The Gracile: Op. 25 No. 8 in D flat major
The eighth study in D flat is a short, quiet masterpiece of bewitching charm and inimitable grace. “The work is imbued with the breath of life, which has been invested with the beauty and perfection fashioned by an artist’s hand, in which a divine fluid flows.”33 Many in the audience, listening to Alice play this extraordinary piece, must have been thinking of the bitter life of the many incarcerated in Theresienstadt. Irma Lauscherová wrote in her 1968 article “Die Kinder von Theresienstadt” (The Children of Theresienstadt):
No butterflies fly here, no trees grow and no flowers bloom. Children, however, must live here. Children and young people, prisoners like everyone else … There are terrifying hygienic conditions in the overcrowded little town … there is a lack of food … The billets are overcrowded … It is a human ant-heap … Filth, fleas, bugs, lice, mice, rats. Infectious diseases rage … More than 15,000 children passed through Theresienstadt ghetto, only about a hundred ever returned.
She continues:
I’d love to know above all else whether Frau Alice Herz-Sommer, well away in Jerusalem, where she teaches in the conservatoire, can still remember her activity in Theresienstadt. She was an excellent music teacher who used to give a few children lessons on the old piano in the Town Hall auditorium after the morning shift or before the evening shift in the mica-splitting workshop. That was not enough for her, however, and she decided that musical education should encompass a larger number of children. She began to give concerts for the young. Every Saturday she would sit at the piano surrounded by her silent listeners in the late afternoon. She would then play a motif, explain it, and then play a few bars more, which she would then explain again and then she would play as a virtuoso going right to the end, treating her young public with the perfection of a great artist.34
Lauscherová, who before the war was a teacher in Prague, was at the heart of the secret school system in the ghetto, but by her side was Alice Herz-Sommer.
The Pinnacle of Perfection: Op. 25 No. 9 in G flat major
The delicately pretty melody of the Ninth Étude in G flat is reminiscent of the theme in the third movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in G major, Op. 79 and the formal, classical language of the piece reveals Chopin’s debt to both Beethoven and Schubert. According to one critic, the Ninth Étude reaches “the pinnacle of perfection and artistry.”35
Viktor Ullmann, the most prominent composer in Theresienstadt, strove for perfection in his works. Alice and Ullmann knew one another well and enjoyed mutual respect. Ullmann even dedicated his fourth sonata to her. Between the summer of 1943 and the spring of 1944 he composed his chamber opera The Emperor of Atlantis,36 with a libretto by Peter Kien. Rich in symbolism and contemporary relevance, the opera is set in the mythical city of Atlantis ruled by the Emperor Uberall who is waging war against the rest of the world. Life and Death—both characters in the opera—have become meaningless and eventually Death goes on strike and no one can die. As the Emperor’s soldiers lie wounded and bleeding on the battlefield, Death offers the Emperor a bargain—he will resume his duties if the Emperor agrees to be his first victim. The Emperor agrees. The opera ends with a quartet based on Luther’s stirring Reformation hymn, Ein’ Feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God), later the inspiration for one of Bach’s greatest cantatas, warning Thou shalt not take Death’s great name in vain. Because of its defiant subject matter, the opera was never performed in Theresienstadt and, indeed, the first production was not until 1975.
In October 1944 Viktor Ullmann was murdered in Auschwitz.
The Octave Study: Op. 25 No. 10 in B minor
The Octave Étude, the tenth in the cycle, is in B minor, and it is full of drama and complaint. The piece might be compared to a typhoon, so powerful is the effect of the sinister and demonic run of octaves.
The previous year, in June 1944, Theresienstadt had been shaken by the “Affair of the Painters.”37 A number of artists among the prisoners had been secretly sketching life in the ghetto and had hidden their drawings throughout the camp. When the International Red Cross visited the camp and one of the delegates demanded to see behind the newly restored facades of the houses, it became clear to the SS that some of these drawings had been smuggled out of the camp and into Switzerland.
As a result of this, the artists Bedřich Fritta, Otto Ungar, Felix Bloch and Leo Haas were interrogated, by none other than Adolf Eichmann. The SS produced their proof: drawings that had been unearthed from their hiding places of famished prisoners scavenging for potato peelings.
“How can you think of painting such a thing; how can you make such a mockery of the truth?” Leo Haas was asked. “Are you trying to imply that people are hungry in the ghetto? The Red Cross has found absolutely no evidence of that.”38 Eventually the
Gestapo in Prague brought charges for “the dissemination of atrocity propaganda abroad.”
Felix Bloch was beaten to death in Theresienstadt’s Little Fortress. The others were transported east—Bedřich Fritta died in Auschwitz and Otto Ungar in Buchenwald. Only Leo Haas survived his incarceration in Sachsenhausen.39
The Eroica: Op. 25, No. 11 in A minor
The Eleventh Étude is without question the most passionate piece of the second cycle and in some ways it resembles the Revolutionary Étude. The passion in Chopin’s music was echoed in the life of Rafael Schächter, one of the the most important figures in Theresienstadt’s musical circle. Schächter had arrived in the ghetto as early as November 1941 and within a year had put together a choir of sixty male and female singers. By 28 November 1942 he was able to put on a performance of Smetana’s Bartered Bride. Many productions followed, but the high point came when Schächter controversially decided to represent the suffering of the Jews of Auschwitz in a performance of a Catholic mass for the dead. His enthusiasm for Verdi’s great Requiem, however, bordered on the fanatical. At a time when every prisoner feared for his life, Schächter worked like a man possessed, preparing a requiem for all the victims of Nazi crimes.
Fortune did not smile on the project. The premiere took place on 6 September 1943, but immediately afterward a transport left Theresienstadt for Auschwitz with almost the entire choir on board. Even after this fearful blow, Schächter would not give up; on the contrary he set out to find new singers and on 2 January 1944 a second performance was given, in the presence of the president of the council of elders. All too soon, the hundred and fifty members of the new choir were themselves packed into cattle trucks bound for Auschwitz. Schächter assembled a third choir and the Requiem was performed again, but with the autumn transports of 1944 the fate of the choir and its director were sealed.
The Divine: Op. 25 No. 12 in C minor
The Twelfth and final Étude is in C minor, often called the Ocean Étude, because its intense, dramatic melody evokes a stormy sea, but Alice calls it “the divine.”40 An eyewitness who attended her concert in February 1945 wrote this about her performance: “This inspiration filled with melancholy sweetness by the youthful Chopin can only be brought to its natural perfection by an interpreter who reads its message of rebirth and revival, and that is the God-given artist, Frau Sommer-Herz.”
TWELVE
Liberation
“As fast as my legs can carry me.”
“PAUL?… PAUL!”
Paul Herz did not have the strength to turn around when he heard the voice behind him. Since early that morning he and three other prisoners had been harnessed to a cart, like dray horses, dragging it back and forth from the connecting platform outside the Hamburg Barracks to the building site on the old town walls. On the way out the cart was loaded with timber, and on the way back with earth and rubble.
Paul had arrived in Theresienstadt on 11 February 1945 and was immediately assigned to a special construction unit.1 Several hundred prisoners had been ordered to construct a square from parts of the parallel defensive walls. Officially this would then be transformed into an artificial lake for a projected duck farm, but it was soon rumored in the camp that the prisoners were in fact digging their own graves. It is possible that the SS was indeed planning to lure the prisoners into the square by telling them there was to be a new head count and then flood the area. They had estimated that they could drown up to 15,000 men at a stroke in that way. The few who managed to flee, they concluded, could be finished off with a single machine gun salvo.2
When Paul heard someone whistle a few bars from Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartet No. 1, his face lit up and, turning, he saw his friend Arnošt Weiss.
“Paul the violinist!… Can it really be you!” Arnošt Weiss, with whom Paul had secretly played in a string quartet, was the head of the Building Works in the Autonomous Jewish Administration.
“When did you get here?”
“It’s my fourth day,” Paul laconically replied. As a Jew related to an Aryan he had been placed under house arrest in Prague and recruited into the labor service. Up until the last moment he had hoped to be spared from deportation but at the end of January 1945 the Germans had begun to send previously “protected” Jews off to Theresienstadt. More than 3,500 men from so-called mixed marriages were brought to Theresienstadt from all over the Protectorate.3
“Can you tell me what happened to my sister?” he asked. He had had no news of Alice since July 1943.
“On Saturday night she is giving another concert,” Arnošt Weiss told him, “for children and adolescents.” Paul’s weary eyes lit up. “Try to get through the next few days. I will look after you…”
Late that afternoon Paul dragged himself off to his billet and fell exhausted on to his mattress, unable to eat or wash let alone search for Alice and her family. He took refuge in sleep until the siren wailed at six the next morning. At the roll-call he heard his name read out: “Paul Herz to report immediately to chief engineer Weiss in the Works Department.”
“I call that luck,” said Arnošt Weiss when his old friend came in. “I need a worker and you pitch up. You will be assigned to the task at once. Come on, Paul.” As they left the office Weiss added quietly, “And besides I need someone to play with me in the evenings.”
“It can’t go on much longer, do you think?” Paul whispered. Hitler’s armies were on the verge of collapse on all fronts. It could only be a matter of days until the war was over and they could all go home. But Arnošt warned his friend, “The Germans will capitulate, but they might try to get rid of us first.”
On that first day Paul was allowed to finish early, as it was Saturday. “Alice is playing at five in the town hall,” said Arnošt Weiss, “now be off with you.”
* * *
IN THE front half of the town hall auditorium around a hundred children and teenagers were crowded together, with dozens of adults seated behind them. Paul Herz sat in the back row and watched his sister, delighted by her lively appearance. Alice was standing at the piano and talking to one of her confidantes. Later Paul learned that it was Irma Lauscherová, Theresienstadt’s secret “headmistress.” Paul saw his nephew Stephan in the front row, looking content and well-cared for.
Every Saturday Alice introduced her young audience to a new composer. Today she was playing the works of the Czech composer Vítěslav Novák and she began by telling the story of the artist’s life.4
With typical skill, engaging naturalness and an unfailing ability to inspire her audience, she took them on a journey through Moravia at the turn of the century, the landscape and folklore of which had profoundly colored Novák’s music. Unlike his more famous contemporary Leoš Janáček, Novák was no modernist, but a representative of Czech late romanticism.
“In the end, with him it is always about the beauty and sublimity of nature and its meaning,” Alice enthused. Then she went over to the piano and demonstrated with what simple means Dvořák’s pupil, who lived out his seventy-five years in the little east Bohemian town of Skuteč, had conjured up the song of the cuckoo so perfectly in his compositions. Alice had all the children cry out “cuckoo” and then she replied with the sequence of notes in which Novák imitated the bird, at which they all erupted into cheerful laughter.
“Novák can also invoke the blossom on the tree and a bright blue sky in music,” Alice went on. “Listen carefully!” The melody announced the spring, which sooner or later follows every winter, and the light, which at some stage will always dissipate the darkness …
Alice’s message was unmistakable: children, place your faith in the coming spring. Men and women, your liberation is just around the corner. But to maintain the light-hearted tone, Alice swiftly moved on to stories that her teacher Václav Štěpán had told her about Novák, a close friend, and their shared love of nature. To finish she played another one of Novák’s works.
When the audience left, Paul got up and walked toward Alice. She was still dee
ply immersed in her work and hadn’t noticed that her brother was there.
“Uncle Pavel!” Stephan cried. “Maminko, Pavel is here, just look,” and excitedly he turned back and forth between his uncle and his mother before throwing himself into the arms of his favorite uncle. In Prague they had lived less than ten minutes away from one another and Paul had visited them at least once a week, to play music with Alice or his brother-in-law.
Paul gave himself time to cuddle Stephan and then turned to his sister.
“We had hoped you had been spared,” Alice said, looking her well-fed brother up and down with astonishment.
“Mary has her virtues, she can get hold of anything,” he responded, sounding almost as if he thought he had been caught out in some way before continuing, “I have brought my violin with me.”
* * *
EARLY IN 1945 negotiations were taking place between the SS and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had expressed a desire to send another delegation to Theresienstadt. At first the SS had predictably refused the request from the Red Cross: concentration camp prisoners were not prisoners of war and the Red Cross’s responsibilities did not extend to them. Eventually, however, Heinrich Himmler overruled those who opposed the idea and decreed that in the case of Theresienstadt an exception would be made. His eagerness to please the Red Cross was clearly part of his plan to negotiate a peace settlement behind Hitler’s back.
On 3 March 1945 Adolf Eichmann was—some say against his will—directed by Himmler to inspect the camp and to report back on whether the camp was presentable.5 “In its present state Theresienstadt will make everyone happy,” Eichmann maintained after his tour of inspection. Nothing needed to be changed. Himmler was not satisfied, however, and next day Eichmann ordered a new “beautification” of Theresienstadt.
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