This year marks the eightieth anniversary of the greatest single mass murder of Czechoslovak citizens. But are round anniversary years any more important than the others? Some events are so important that it might be a good idea to “unround” them and to treat each year as equally worthy of remembering. Because it is important to constantly engage in conversation about things that happened in the past and to confront them with the things happening today, that happened last year, and that will happen a year from year.
… At the Memorial of Silence, we kept this idea in mind as we put together the program for our March commemoration of the liquidation of the Terezín family camp. We presented the rediscovered legacy of Alma Rosé in a stage dramatization about this excellent violinist who was a witness to this act of mass murder.
… The first composition commemorated Hans Krása, one of the composers who was sent by train from Terezín to his death in Auschwitz eighty years ago. The concert concluded with the Škampa Quartet’s performance of contemporary composer Steve Reich’s outstanding piece in which his train travels across the United States inspired a reflection on his Jewish relatives, who around the same time were being put on trains headed for the extermination camps.
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