The Šarbilach orchestra’s autumn concert series continued with a performance for the Memorial of Silence at Bubny Station. The event was also an opportunity to remember the orchestra’s recently deceased founder, Jaromír Vogel.
The concert has been made possible thanks to a contribution from the Endowment Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust, which is funded by the Czech Ministry of Culture.
“The Memorial of Silence generally concludes its theater and concert season in late October, because the station building becomes inhospitable with falling temperatures. But we got an offer to perform from this orchestra, whose name translates as ‘shards of happiness.’ Also ‘listening’ to the music were the faces on the photographs from the Terezín Ghetto album from our most recent exhibition. The station hall was filled with klezmer melodies from the Balkans, Ukraine, and Galicia – eastern music with captivating rhythms and legends that added to the atmosphere of our place of memory.
As the concert was reaching its climax, my phone vibrated in my pocket and I read the following brief headline on the display: ‘We’re at war: Rockets claim victims in Poland…’
There is no end to debates as to who shot at whom. Commentaries full of accusations remain heated. Whatever the case, that rocket flew into a concert held at a site associated with wartime tragedy – another sign that the past touches the present and vice versa,” Pavel Štigl, director of the Memorial of Silence, reflects on the evening.
