by Unknown
Competitions and contests were a constant part of the Juilliard experience. My parents always encouraged me to do my best. My father frequently reminded me that I could do anything that anyone else could do. He also encouraged me to persevere in difficult situations. Yet, when I didn’t win, my parents were never bitter. They emphasized the importance of preparing for the competition over winning.
While my parents encouraged me in the arts, they were much less concerned about my academic performance. They seemed to have had complete faith in my ability to be successful in music. However, they did emphasize academics with my younger brother, Danny, who also went on to become an expert in cybernetics and computers, and an international chess master. This seemed to reflect an unspoken Middle European sensibility and attitude toward women.
During my adolescence my parents often made music together, my father playing the violin, harmonica, or the mandolin, while my mother sang and played the piano. They played for themselves and for family and friends whenever we were together. My recollections of childhood and adolescence center on the importance of music in our lives.
My intense desire to succeed also emanated from the need to affirm the reason for my parents’ survival. Although I did enjoy performing, I truly wanted to bring joy to their lives, especially through music. Looking back, I feel my playing helped to heal the wounds of their wartime experiences. My mother has always struggled with the absence of a normal adolescence. Going from a comfortable upbringing to fighting for survival to starting over so many times has taken a toll. She gave her energy to my father, my brother, and me; however, she has had trouble moving on with her own life. Surprises and spontaneity have always been difficult for her. It was as though she constantly had to be on guard. At times I have had difficulty really understanding her fears, worries, and pessimism.
My late father, on the other hand, somehow was able to put the awful past behind him and live for the present and the future. He appreciated everything good and positive in his life. He was so proud of my brother’s and my accomplishments. His optimism became my model. He believed so strongly that whatever one’s abilities, be they musical, intellectual, or physical, they were yours; no one could take them from you. My father always praised me as being the best, although I knew that I was not and that I did have limitations. My parents’ love and confidence in me was a great support during those formative years.
Over the fourteen years I worked and studied with Ms. DeLay, I graduated from Juilliard Prep, College, and Graduate School with my master’s degree. I was her assistant at Juilliard and at the Aspen Summer Music Festival. Later I joined the faculty at Queens College in New York, where I was also the violist for the Andreas Quartet, which was in residence. Since the 1980s I have been on the faculty of New York’s Manhattan School of Music.
Early on I recognized that those who loved music and supported the arts were very interesting and, often, very unusual people. These contacts broadened my outlook and served as a further stimulus to pursue my career. I made a conscious decision not to be surrounded only by musicians. The performances and summer festivals in which I participated introduced me to a wide range of interesting and special people from diverse fields, including medicine, law, architecture, media, and diplomacy. I decided that I did not want to marry a musician, although music would have to be important to my mate.
Having dated many men, it was very clear to me that Jay Selman was the right person for me. Although Jay came from Tyler, Texas, a small town, music was central to his life. Not only did he, his parents, and siblings all play musical instruments, but also his best friend, Ralph Kirshbaum, is a concert cellist from the same town. Mutual friends introduced us, knowing our love of music. Within a year we were married. Jay has always encouraged and supported me as a musician and performer. Without his support I could not have developed into the musician, teacher, and performer that I have become. He has given me the freedom I needed to continue growing and pursuing my musical career. I trust and respect his intelligence and sensitivity, and I admire his modesty for someone who is so well-rounded. He is a wonderful husband, father, and my best friend.
We have two wonderful sons, Jeremy and Ari. My late father had a special relationship with Jeremy; however, he did not live long enough to develop such a close bond with Ari. My mother has had a tremendous influence on both boys. Her love, intellect, and artistic nature have given her a special perspective and have helped build a bridge from her generation to theirs. Jeremy has a special love of music; Ari is a talented clarinetist. Both have a deep aesthetic sensibility influenced by their parents and grandparents. My mother has been able to communicate the reality and the pain of her and my father’s experiences in the Holocaust without overwhelming our sons. Jeremy interviewed his grandmother for his Hebrew School class at age five. My mother and Jeremy were interviewed for the Shoah project. I believe her ability to share her experiences with her grandchildren has helped to heal some of her wounds.
Early in my professional career I was primarily a performer who did some teaching. After the births of Jeremy and Ari, I decided to concentrate on teaching instead of performing. I realized that I had a special gift and ability to communicate with and inspire my students. My teaching proficiency was the result of my having worked with truly great teachers, especially Dorothy DeLay. To this day, almost forty years later, she remains a close friend. My career exemplifies the special opportunity afforded by America, where I had the freedom to grow and to develop long-term relationships and my special talents. This contrasts starkly with the fate of so many in my parents’ generation who never knew such opportunities.
My students have come from the United States and all over the world. I feel a special empathy for those learning a new language and adjusting to a different culture. I have compassion for and a desire to help those who are in financial need. I have tried to open as many doors as possible to help them get the support they need. My experiences and observations have led me to understand the special problems of women musicians. I have tried to be a role model and mentor and to show them they can be musicians, wives, and mothers because these roles have been so fulfilling and rewarding to me. My students have become members of the finest orchestras in the world, soloists and chamber performers, teachers, and parents.
I never dreamed that I would be able to grow and develop and have the opportunity to work closely with two of the world’s greatest violinists, Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman. Since 1993 I have worked with Pinchas Zukerman at The Manhattan School in New York, in Israel, and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Canada. With Itzhak Perlman and his wife, Toby, I have been a founding faculty member of the Perlman Music Program in New York for highly gifted young students from all over the world. We all share special bonds from our experiences in Israel and in America, especially at Juilliard and in the summer programs.
I have always felt that my music, in all its forms, has served to honor my parents and is a testament to their struggles and their love for me and for music. Despite the absence of a normal childhood and the terrible experiences they suffered, my parents were able to give me the love, support, and values needed to make a healthy life. My life and career have been a living testament to the presence and continuity of music and love that could be dimmed, but not extinguished, by a tyrant and circumstances. Music reflects my experiences as a child of survivors and as a parent of the next generation in America.
Since 1987 PATINKA KOPEC has been a member of the string faculty at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, where she teaches violin and viola in both the college and preparatory programs. She is a teaching associate with Pinchas Zukerman and program coordinator of the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music. Students come from all over the world to study with her.
In 1995 she was a co-founding faculty member of the Perlman Music Program, conceived and directed by Toby Perlman. Ms. Kopec teaches there with Itzhak Perlman, who also conducts the chamber orchestra i
n the program.
Chapter 3: Journey to the Planet of Death by Hadassah Lieberman
Hadassah Lieberman and her mother, Ella Wieder Freilich
To my beautiful mother,
Ella Wieder Freilich,
a presence in the absence
Hadassah Lieberman’s mother and my mother lived in neighboring towns. They were taken on the same transport, on the same tragic night, from their family’s Passover seder table directly to Auschwitz. Over fifty years later, Hadassah and I now live a few doors away from each other and are very dear friends. After reading her heartfelt record of visiting Auschwitz, I was ever more determined to do this book. –MW
It was a Thursday morning, January 19, 1995, and I was at work when the call from the White House came. Would I join the American delegation to the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz? The invitation took my breath away, and in a cracked voice I responded, “If I can go...I have to go.”
My first fleeting thoughts were of my schedule, job, six-year-old daughter Hana, and my husband, Joe. The delegation was leaving in just five days. Not much time to prepare for what might be the most important journey of my life.
My mother, Ella Wieder Freilich, was in Auschwitz. From childhood, I had heard her intersperse stories of that distant, horrific concentration camp with our everyday American lives. I always listened carefully, although she may have thought from my body language that I was more removed. I was always afraid she might cry too much if she continued her dark memories...and then the dreadful story would end abruptly, and we would continue the usual conversation about meals or clothes or schools. But the stories were disconnected, seemingly plucked at random from her memory, and I got the feeling there was much more there, left unsaid, in the dark, behind curtains—memories that she can’t find herself.
My father, Rabbi Samuel Freilich, was headed for Auschwitz when he organized an escape of twenty men from a forced march of slave laborers. He confronted memories of the Holocaust head on, and wrote a book about it called The Coldest Winter. But the experience of putting the story on paper seemed to drain him of life, and he died soon after its publication.
He and my mother survived Auschwitz. Most of their relatives and friends did not.
Yet, when the call came, I had not been thinking about the upcoming anniversary. I don’t spend my life contemplating these things all the time, despite (or because of?) the fact that I am the daughter of survivors. My very existence is a testimony to survival, and there has always been an undercurrent of striving to be strong and successful in my life (a trait I’ve seen in many children of survivors). But the specific thought of the Holocaust is not often at the front of my mind. I had never been to any of the camps, and had not planned to go. The only place I did visit was Czechoslovakia, because I wanted to go to the places where my family had lived and where I was born. I didn’t have a desire to go to the places where my family was sent to die.
So the invitation took me by surprise. The mundane logistical problems associated with a major trip mixed with the painful memories, making it difficult to decide whether to go. I called my mother, who now lives in Riverdale, New York, and she was very apprehensive. She feared for my safety. Who will go with you? Who will stand with you at the ceremony? Why is it necessary for you to go?
But in the end I concluded that she is why it is necessary for me to go. She and my father and their relatives and friends. As I said when the call first came, I had to go.
These were my thoughts along the way:
Tuesday, January 24…
In-flight to Frankfurt
The last few days, the only preparation time I have, I cry often. I call Auschwitz survivors, friends of my mother, for words of support and connection. For the most part, they remain quiet, saying simply, “Go in peace. Bring back peace.”
I am on a Delta flight and I’ve just finished reading some articles from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington—excruciating material—describing concentration camps in the vicinity of Auschwitz and Birkeneau. I wipe the tears from my eyes, mesmerized by this world of cruelty, torture, realizing I am soon to visit this symbol of all evil.
The descriptions of the concentration camps are incomprehensible—another world, another place. The screen above me plays out O. J. Simpson’s trial, Japan’s earthquake. I watch the survivors from Japan and wonder, how can you not feel for these people? How can you not feel for their homelessness, their cold, their devastation...and I don’t understand what happened in these camps.
I find myself looking at a picture of Joe in the Washington Post...sweet darling....The picture makes me feel stronger. Now Newt Gingrich is on the screen. And Chris Dodd. The world is so intrusive around me...makes it hard to come back...so I drink another glass of wine.
Before I left, my mother asked me to bring back dirt from Auschwitz. Nearly all of her family was burned and pulverized into that dirt, that stinking, evil earth...do you bring it home? Is this their grave, entire families? Where are they buried? The ovens? The crematoria? The pits? Fifty years later the stench and screams will not be there.
How evil can people be? Watch the news and you see in small snippets: Chechnya, Bosnia, the Middle East. But the sheer enormity of this evil that I am traveling to witness is incomprehensible. The enormity and the organization of it all. I know there are criminals who do ugly, horrible things every day. But the Holocaust was the product of a whole criminal society, a society of people who were educated, literate, loved music, loved art, loved literature. And look what they did with such efficiency, with so little evidence of guilt.
Wednesday, January 25…
Frankfurt, Germany, and Warsaw, Poland
A three-hour layover in the morning in Frankfurt at the new, empty airport. So empty and antiseptic it is scary to me, somehow. All the signs are in German. It is my first time in Germany, and I’m feeling guarded inside myself. I speak mostly with a woman from the State Department, telling her about my background, my mother. I pick up the newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and there is a picture of Hitler! It was taken in 1944, and he looked tired, old. It shows him viewing something with a magnifying glass. He knew then that his war was failing. But he pushed on with the Final Solution, as furiously as ever. It was in 1944 that my mother was herded to the camps. Even as the war effort was faltering, the Nazis pressed on to kill the Jews because it was an ideology to them, a mission above and beyond the war itself.
In the afternoon, we fly to Warsaw and are picked up by embassy people there and brought to the Marriott hotel, where delegates from around the world are also arriving. That evening, I go to a reception at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to Poland, Nicholas Rey, along with some of the other members of our delegation, including Miles Lerman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and his wife Chris, an Auschwitz survivor; Ambassador John Kordek, now with DePaul University; and Jan Nowak, director of the Polish American Congress. The head of our delegation, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke are to join us the next day.
We begin to talk about the controversy surrounding the ceremony planned for Friday. Since the Communists left, the Poles have been more open about the Jews in the camps. But Auschwitz was initially for Polish political prisoners. Poles see Auschwitz as a national shrine and museum. And it seems as though they wanted the commemoration to be more of a generic event, with no special emphasis on Jewish deaths. No reciting of the Kaddish, Jewish prayer for the dead. In response, some are planning an alternative service on Thursday at Birkenau. Preposterous, but true, Elie’s words, “not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims,” need to be repeated over and over again.
I am concerned about the controversy but, at the same time, I do not want to lose sight of the larger reason for our being there. I am moved to say that I understand there’s controversy around us. But we should not forget how incredible it is that we’re all here together, from all over the
world, to commemorate something that happened fifty years ago that, at the time, nobody wanted to hear about. We need to talk about the details, but we should not lose sight of the fact that we’re here as representatives of our country, bearing witness to what happened to so many people.
We decided that those of us who wanted to go to the alternative service will meet in the hotel lobby the next morning. I have mixed feelings. As a Jew and the daughter of survivors, I want to go to Birkenau. As a member of the official American delegation, I am worried that it might detract from protocol if I deviate from the schedule, which includes a ceremony at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. But everyone assures me that the American delegation will be sufficiently represented at the university.
Thursday, January 26...
Warsaw... Krakow... Birkenau... Auschwitz
We arrive in Krakow, a city untouched by bombing. Some say it is a “small Prague.” Krakow: more than twenty-five percent of its population was Jewish and ninety percent of its Jews were annihilated. Now tours are advertised to show where Spielberg filmed in the Jewish “ghetto” area. The Ariel Café is booming with Eastern European/Jewish foods and Yiddish music. The synagogue is old—dating back to the 1400s. Stone markers from Jewish cemeteries are preserved as part of the wall.