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Don't Forget about Me
- The Short Life of Gideon Klein, Composer and Pianist
- David Fligg
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 14 June 2023
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- 18 November 2022
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Gideon Klein was one of the most gifted musicians of his generation. This book traces his short life through his music, his diaries and documents as well as the reminiscences of his friends and family.
24 - Aftermath
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 14 June 2023
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- 18 November 2022, pp 277-282
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Once the immediate area had been liberated by the Red Army, and the Germans finally routed, local civilians helped to bury the remains of the slaughtered prisoners in a communal grave in the camp grounds. Piotr Olej recalls that 239 bodies were recovered and that in the early 1960s the bodies were exhumed. They were taken to the nearby Leśny Cmentarz (Forest Cemetery), which, according to a local historian, Jacek Zając, had already been used since late 1942 to bury prisoners from the various Fürstengrube camps. The graves are unmarked; Zając said that what might look like individual burial mounds are tokenistic, since Klein and his fellow prisoners are in a communal, unmarked, relatively shallow plot. The details of the exhumation and reburial have been lost in the mists of a dark, Communist past. Russians and Germans killed in January 1945 are also buried there, and a separate part of the cemetery contains the graves of German POWs, who worked the mines after the war. A local conservation group tidies up the whole site each year. But in truth, the cemetery was never intended to be a formal, cultivated place, since the wartime and post-war burials were perfunctory at best. Today, this clearing is the closest one can get to Klein's mortal remains. But, thanks to Zając as a worthy and sensitive guide, I was able to light a memorial candle and recite traditional Jewish prayers at this eerily peaceful site in a Silesian forest.
Soon after the war, the war-crimes trials began, and in addition to those individuals who contributed to Klein's murder, and were caught, tried and executed, there were too many who evaded justice. IG Farben, the company which owned the Fürstengrube mine and stood at the centre of Hitler's industrial might, running a whole series of slave-labour camps, was put on corporate trial at Nuremberg. It offered a cynical defence, arguing that the inhumane conditions in their camps, mines and factories were as a direct result of the SS, corrupt prisoners and external building contractors, and that by giving prisoners work, the company had saved them from the gas chambers.
List of Illustrations
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 14 June 2023
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- 18 November 2022, pp 7-10
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16 - A Terezín Personality
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 14 June 2023
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- 18 November 2022, pp 195-203
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By April 1942, Klein was composing once again, and was busier than ever. He had a steady stream of new compositions, was preparing for, and performing in, concerts and rehearsals, and had his general responsibilities in the Free Time Administration. In addition, he was involved in the Youth Care Department, and was taking part in an ambitious lecture series. The main office of the Free Time Administration was in the Magdeburg Barracks (now part of the Terezín Memorial Museum and its archives) and so, in addition to his other workplace, L417, the Magdeburg is where he spent much of his time. Irma Semecká worked in the office and, in the final months of his imprisonment, they became very close, eventually falling deeply in love. Klein's senior by three years, she was enormously intelligent in her own right. She confided, in a letter to Lisa dated 3 June 1945, that ‘in those six months we did not say a single bad word to each other’. He used to visit the office ‘to warm up when his fingers were nearly freezing to the keys of the piano’, Irma recalled:
He would sit down for a while, have a chat but mostly he would only listen. Afterwards he would leave as quietly as he had entered, carrying a few pieces of coal in his hands to be able to warm up his studio.
The studio, as Klein proudly called it, was in reality ‘a dark squalid cubbyhole with a window and bars, an old mattress replacing the window glass’, Irma said. She continues:
It was next to a privy which stank so bad that sitting there was pure torture. However, Gideon would spend several hours a day in that cubbyhole, in which the only piece of furniture was an upright piano, if we do not count the chair in.
Klein's fellow pianist and friend from Prague, Truda Solarová, has presented a vivid picture of some of his work:
He was using his position to help other musicians to develop their talents, regardless of whether they were young or old, professionals or amateurs. It was his trademark to strive for genuine art and to avoid any compromise. His talents were many and varied. Right at the beginning of his time in Terezín, he organised poetry readings. The first was an evening of French poetry in Karel Čapek's translation.
22 - Klein's Last Winter and Death
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 18 November 2022, pp 263-272
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The war had given the Silesian coal mines a new lease of life, as old seams once considered unsafe could now be worked by a ready supply of slaves, who could easily be replaced if killed or injured by pit collapses. IG Farben, the German pharmaceutical and chemical company, which was also partly involved in the manufacture of the Zyklon B gas-crystals used in the gas chambers, owned a majority stake in the mines. A major Third Reich contractor, IG Farben considered health and safety to be an irrelevance; at any cost, the coal was required to make synthetic rubber for the war effort. Adjacent to the mines, the Fürstengrube site comprised a series of smaller camps, all within a short distance of one another. Lager Süd (Southern Camp), run by the SS, was the only one for Jews, and held around 1,200 prisoners by the summer of 1943. Lager Waldek held non-Jewish prisoners of various nationalities, Lager Ostland was for female prisoners and Lager Nord for Russian POWs. Although all the camps came under jurisdiction of IG Farben, Lager Süd was the only section affiliated to Auschwitz. The prisoners were tasked to work the old mine (Altanlage) and excavate a new one (Neuanlage); in both cases, the working environment was appalling. Having been in Auschwitz for only a short time, Klein would not have had time to discover that living conditions in Lager Süd were every bit as harsh as the main Auschwitz camp. Coming from Terezín, where, despite the squalor, he at least lodged with members of his own family, and had some relative freedom, his new environment, with prisoners packed like proverbial sardines, and meagre food rations, was a living hell. Moreover, the camp contained what were known as Muselmänner, a slang word originating in Auschwitz, derived from ‘Muslim’, to denote prisoners who were exhausted, emaciated and ill: Muselmänner had difficulty standing upright, and so the image of a prone Muslim at prayer gave rise to the expression. The hard labour of twelve-hour shifts inflicted on the prisoners was not supported by adequate food, and anyone on a late shift would find their rations back at the camp to be cold, or having been bartered by other prisoners.
I - Přerov (1919–31)
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 18 November 2022, pp 23-24
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13 - Establishing the Ghetto
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 18 November 2022, pp 169-174
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By the time Klein was composing the last of his Prague works, the occupied city retained but a shadow of its former splendour. There had been a large influx of Germans, street signs and many newspapers were now in German, shops were becoming depleted of goods and the Czech currency had become devalued. For Jews, their wages had been capped and, in any case, they found it almost impossible to find work, as self-employment for them was prohibited. In November 1940 Jews were instructed to hand over their bank-account passbooks and so, in order to try and recoup some cash, they began to rent out rooms in their homes. In a city where Jewish poverty was previously almost unknown, they were now eating charity food in soup kitchens, as more and more restrictions were placed on them. All this hardship was in addition to the prohibitions inflicted by the Nuremberg Laws.
By September 1941 Jews had to register officially with the authorities so that the occupying Germans could monitor Jewish demographics. Jews had fallen so low on the social ladder that when, shortly afterwards, the Germans announced the establishment of a so-called autonomous Jewish town at the former army garrison of Terezín, it seemed an attractive proposition. Zdenka Fantlová explained: ‘We got out a map to see in what direction Terezín lay from Prague. It didn't seem so horrible. If they evacuate us to that place, we pondered, we shall still be on Czechoslovak territory, still more or less home-based – just elsewhere, in a different town’. The historian Margalit Shlain has written:
The Germans managed to persuade the leaders of the Jews in the Protectorate as to the ‘seriousness’ of their plans to establish a Ghetto in Theresienstadt by inviting the leaders to participate in the detailed planning of all aspects of life in the Ghetto. Building a ‘Model Jewish Town’, was indeed something that was in accordance with their values, and was in a way a challenge worthy of their aspirations as pioneers. It should be remembered, that in 1941 the majority of the Jewish leadership in Prague was Zionist.
10 - Making Music under Occupation
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 18 November 2022, pp 139-147
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His formal education now over, despite clandestine tutelage from Hába and Hutter, and with basic freedoms for Jews being rapidly curtailed, Klein was nonetheless engaged in a hectic amount of musical activity. Though no longer performing in public as a soloist, he undertook regular work in the theatre playing for E. F. Burian's D-34 Theatre, which despite its characteristically leftist, though not overtly anti-occupation leanings, continued to function until Burian's arrest in 1941.
He also played for the avant-garde Divadlo pro 99 (D99 Theatre) at the Topičův (Topic) salon, near the National Theatre, established in January 1940 by Gustav Schorsch (1918-45), who was also its director. Only two years Klein's senior, a graduate of the Prague Conservatoire drama department, and a student of aesthetics and philosophy at Charles University, Schorsch was a remarkable person whose life hereon was to become intertwined with Klein’s. Schorsch's brilliant intellect and his phenomenal talent as an actor and theatrical director would ensure that he and Klein had much in common. For the same reasons that Klein, prevented from performing, turned more to composition, so too did Schorsch turn to directing from acting.
How these theatres could operate in practical terms under the occupation was testing in its own right. With so much Jewish involvement, maintaining a semblance of normality within the performing arts in Prague was a challenge, as the Jews’ basic freedoms were eroded. To say that Prague's Jews became imprisoned in their own city is no exaggeration, and this incarceration became increasingly severe. By early 1940, there was an 8 p.m. curfew for Jews, who were banned from theatres, cinemas and various other public places, and were permitted in restaurants only if rooms were set aside specifically for them. Before long, they were forbidden from owning radios, even from keeping pets, and so normal, everyday life and the ability to interact routinely with society became impossible. It followed that for non-Jews helping Jews to circumvent the prohibitions, the punishments were severe. Many non-Jewish Czechs nonetheless continued to help their Jewish friends and neighbours in numerous ways, while just as many took the decision to look out only for themselves and their families, and obliterated years of friendship in one fell swoop.
17 - Terezín Pianist
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 18 November 2022, pp 204-214
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In 1943, the actress Zdenka Fantlová was playing the part of Aphrodite in a cabaret, Rabbi Akiba was no Liar – or was he?, written by Josef Lustig and Jiří Spitz. After one of the performances in the attic theatre of the Dresden Barracks, she had her only personal encounter with Klein, a chance meeting:
The lights of the theatre were already out, and I was the last to leave. It was quite early, because of the curfew, maybe around eight o’clock. Just as I was leaving, Gideon comes in. He hadn't been at the performance, and he just came in to practise. So he says, ‘Don't go. Stay here, and I’ll play something for you,’ and I thought, well, an invitation like this from such a good-looking young man, and I’m the only audience, so I said, ‘OK, if you want to’. So I was sitting there on a bench, at the front, and he got up on the stage, and there was a big piano, with legs and everything, don't know what make it was, and he sat down, and he played Chopin's Etude Op. 25, No. 12 in C minor. And I was sitting there, thinking this is not true. It was surreal, a genius playing in this attic, and I, a nobody, sitting in the audience. He should be playing in Carnegie Hall with an elegant audience. Yet, where are we? We’re in prison. It was extraordinary. When he finished, we both left. And that was the scene, like out of a film.
Whether playing to a single person, to a larger audience, or the ‘inner circle’, as Jan Fischer described it, Klein's recital performances in Terezín maintained the standard of excellence and virtuosity that he had established in Prague. There were any number of pianists in the ghetto, and once concerts became sanctioned and well established, venues were set up, confiscated pianos from Prague began to arrive and practice rosters were prepared for the players. Norbert Fryd recalls:
Whoever was a musician had to be auditioned, because enthusiastic amateurs wished to enrol themselves for concert practice just as eagerly as renowned pianists. Due to cramped accommodation space, it was also necessary to economise on every free available room where a large audience could fit in.
21 - From Terezín to Auschwitz
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 18 November 2022, pp 257-262
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On 30 September, Karel Ančerl conducted his last concert in Terezín before being transported, along with Gideon Klein and many of the other musicians, to Auschwitz two weeks later. The concert consisted of Haas’ Study for Strings, which Klein had conducted in rehearsal, Dvořák's Serenade for Strings and Suk's Meditation on the Saint Wenceslas Hymn. This latter work, though dating from 1914, had become something of an unofficial national anthem, an intense nationalist elegy, for the Czechs. Undoubtedly, Klein would have been at this concert, and it is quite probably the last live concert music he ever heard. His dark mood in those final weeks in the ghetto are clearly described by Irma Semecká. When they went for a walk one day, he expressed his anxieties. Clearly he had not been taken in by the deception of the beautification, because he knew that the Terezín ghetto, from its very inception, was one huge, obscene sham.
‘I have been here for three years,’ he said suddenly, ‘and I am so destroyed that I think I will never be normal again. I will never be able to wipe these years away from my life – and it's not the end yet. And I don't even know if I’ll ever get back. If only this could be sure at least.’ I tried to calm him down but my words were in vain. I didn't know how to do it. I myself could have done with some comfort. I could only feel how those cold, sceptical words uttered with a freezing little grin, but with trembling lips, were hiding a deep internal pain of an artist who is getting used up more and more without finding a fountain from which he could drink some new energy. ‘If only you knew,’ he went on bitterly, ‘how well I know it all. The pain, the poverty, everything. I was one of the first to come here. There was nothing here, but perhaps it was better in the beginning. Better than now when we get all those “benefits” with the orchestra in the square. I know what it's all about. I know and I can estimate anything that's going to happen here. Nothing can take me by surprise.’ I knew how useless it was to try and talk him out of his bitterness.
2 - A Moravian Childhood
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 18 November 2022, pp 36-50
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The spacious house on Velké Novosady opposite the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren on what is now Drahlovského Street, no longer exists, having long since been demolished as part of a redevelopment scheme. But in Klein's day he enjoyed the extensive grounds and outbuildings, the physical backdrop for his cosseted, loving, cultured and, in many ways, exciting environment. Yet his encounter with music was not restricted to within his own family. By the early twentieth century, Přerov, with its agricultural industry amid the rich, fertile plains of Moravia, and also an important railway junction, was no backwater in terms of wealth or culture. During Klein's formative years it enjoyed high-quality music-making. It was close enough to the city of Olomouc for visiting professional musicians or actors to travel the fifteen miles from there every Monday evening to perform in Přerov's splendid neo-Renaissance Municipal House, putting on plays, concerts and even opera. World-class musicians, not least Leoš Janáček himself, were only 50 miles away in the Moravian capital of Brno. Eminent musicians regularly appeared in Přerov, including Dvořák's pupil, and at one time the principal conductor of the Czech Philharmonic, Oscar Nedbal, who on an unrecorded date conducted Smetana's opera The Kiss in the Municipal House there. Later to become a leading Czech theatre conductor, Zdeněk Chalabala gave orchestral concerts in Přerov. Emmy Destinn, one of the foremost sopranos of her age, sang in Smetana's Dalibor in Přerov, and the singer Magda Šantruček, one of Dvořák's daughters, lived in the town, where she organised concerts. Her mother, Dvořák's widow Anna Dvořáková, visited Přerov each year, as did her son-in-law, the composer Josef Suk, one of the major Czech composers of the post-Dvořák period. The town was a supportive environment for emerging musicians. Two of Klein's Přerov-born contemporaries would later become professional musicians: the conductor Vilém Tauský, and the violinist, composer, writer and illustrater Josef Kainar who was at school with Klein, the two of them performing together in a school concert in March 1931.
23 - A Last Letter
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 18 November 2022, pp 273-276
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Klein spent his final winter, after he turned 25 on 6 December, in the freezing cold of Poland. As icy winds blew in from the north, he found an opportunity, remarkably, to smuggle out a letter to Prague. The details of exactly how that was achieved are still a mystery, but he was assisted by a prisoner in nearby Lager Waldek, Simon Pastre, whom he may have encountered on work duty. Any other contact between prisoners of the separate camps was impossible, and the prisoners sent from Auschwitz were deliberately and specifically isolated. Some prisoners, though not the Jewish ones in Larger Süd, were responsible for the mail service to and from to the camp, and it is possible that Pastre was involved in this activity in some way. Apart from the Soviet and Jewish prisoners, the ones from other nationalities were permitted to correspond with family, subject to censorship. There was always a risk of being caught for smuggling letters, the punishment being fifteen lashes in public in order to intimidate the other prisoners. But both Klein and Pastre must have felt it was worth the risk, so that the letter could somehow circumvent censorship; and it was, because it contains first-hand information about the dire circumstances of the prisoners which would have normally been expurgated.
The double-sided letter in Klein's hand is largely legible, and signed by him, though the name and address of the sender is that of Pastre, written in the latter's somewhat calligraphic handwriting. It would have been impossible for Klein to receive a reply, but more of a chance for Pastre to do so. Certainly, as the name suggests, and the fact that he had written the French word for address, ‘adresse’, Pastre seems to have been French, but beyond that, his identity remains an enigma. An inventory of the number of prisoners for that winter indicates that Waldek had among its prisoners 91 French, though no Belgians. One wonders whether Simon Pastre might have been connected with the non-Jewish Comtesse Lily Pastre, who helped shelter Jewish musicians in occupied France, as well as helping to preserve the music of Jewish composers by organising clandestine concerts. Conversely, this generous individual might have been using a pseudonym. Knowing that he no longer had family back in Prague, Klein addresses his letter to his sister Edith's mother-in-law, Marie Doláková.
Index of Klein’s Works
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- 18 November 2022, pp 309-310
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General Index
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 18 November 2022, pp 311-322
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11 - Family and Friends under Occupation
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Don't Forget about Me
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- 18 November 2022, pp 148-156
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The orphanage on Belgická was quite possibly where Klein first met Frantiská Edelsteinová (1917–44). She had been an outstanding medical student at Charles University, and lived a few doors down from the orphanage on Belgická. Almost three years older than Klein, she was mature, highly intelligent and a spirited redhead. In the winter of 1940–41, Gideon and Frantiská began a relationship, but after six months it was floundering, with Frantiská clearly frustrated that he would not, or could not, commit to the relationship as deeply as she would have liked. Things came to a head in the spring of 1941 and at the beginning of May she wrote a long letter to Klein, something of a cri de coeur, which reveals much about how he engaged with non-familial relationships, but also shows the intense love which Frantiská felt for him.
Dated 5 May 1941, she begins her letter ‘Angel – I decided to get down to it after all. That is to briefly summarise my half-year knowledge of you’. She describes Klein as ‘an intellectual type who has to a great extent broken away from the material world, from its practical and everyday side that is, and he is at home mainly in the spiritual world’. Yet she points to an apparent paradox by saying:
Perhaps in trying to overcome a certain feeling of inferiority, you try to span many subjects and impress people with it sometimes. But this way you, as a matter of fact, come back to the material world that you, I think, initially rather held in disregard. You return to it mainly because you expect it to give you admiration and appreciation.
She then writes about his ‘inability or unsuccessful attempts at creating close relationships’, adding, ‘You are sometimes so uncertain when it comes to women, to whom you attribute certain assumed qualities’. Interestingly, this observation is borne out by Hana Žantovská, who, in 1946, reflected on her friendship with Klein:
It was a ‘non-romantic’ friendship. That's at least how Gideon called them, and thus differentiated them from relationships that were more emotional. He had many of these ‘non-romantic’ friendships, and within those he was a very sincere, kind and faithful companion. He held some of his female friends in high regard, and he valued their exceptional abilities. Still, a man was the benchmark of performance for him.
7 - Student Years
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- 18 November 2022, pp 112-125
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At that time, Klein had a busy social life and the cafés, of course, often served as a backdrop to this activity. In such surroundings, he was no longer a mere observer, tagging along with Lisa to meet her friends. Café Mánes continued to be a favourite, but now that he was older, he would also frequent the students’ café on Na Zderaz, close to his old school. It was in 1938, at about the time of his school graduation ball, that he first met Hana Žantovská (1921–2004), who later became a noted Czech translator. They became close friends, though the relationship was not a romantic one. Hana first met Klein, ‘a very handsome young man’, as she describes him, at one of the cafés, and offers a very finely drawn portrait:
I was then in the preposterous habit of talking ‘formally’ to people whom I met only recently and was not yet used to them. I addressed them with the formal ‘you’, as opposed to ‘thou’ that a teenager would normally use for people of the same age in the Czech language. For some reason, Gideon took a liking to my formal silliness and we persisted in it the whole time that we knew each other. It had a taste of gentle teasing and it was our ‘trademark’. Gideon, older by two years, styled himself as my mentor and I played a simple-minded pupil. ‘How does Schubert's Unfinished start? What, Miss Hana, you cannot whistle the tune? Shame on you!’
Through Hana, Klein met many of the young writers with whom she mixed, including the most famous of that young group, Jiří Orten, whose tragic death was to be immutably bound up with the fate of the Kleins during the war. Klein's knowledge of literature struck Hana immediately, observing that his understanding of it seemed to equal his expertise in music, that his friendliness and ability to connect with people was so evident, and that, in her words, ‘he knew how to share’.
It did not take him long to tell you all about his sister Lisa, her friends the Grünfeld girls and Professor Kurz.
IV - Auschwitz and Fürstengrube (1944–45)
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- 18 November 2022, pp 255-256
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15 - The Free-Time Administration and the Youth Care Department
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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In view of Klein's intense closeness to his family, the first few months in Terezín without his mother and sister must often have been distressing. Pre-printed postcards did occasionally reach Prague from Terezín, and Czech gendarmes could be bribed to deliver messages back and forth, though these channels carried huge risks. In short, whether he was able to keep in touch with his family is unknown. But on 20 July 1942 Ilona and Lisa arrived in the camp on Transport AAS from Prague. The period leading up to their departure was tense. ‘In that time, I was desperately looking for a lawyer for my brother-in-law who was sentenced to death’, Lisa recalled. In fact, for a short while before his execution in Munich in August 1943, Jaroslav Dolak was imprisoned at Terezín, in the Gestapo prison, known as the Mala Pevnost (‘Small Fortress’), across the river from the main ghetto. Lisa explained that she and Ilona prepared to leave their home:
At least I managed to sort the flat out. My brother-in-law's mum was renting it out till the end of the war, so bits and pieces of the family's stuff my Mum had brought in were preserved. I was exhausted. I could be arrested at any moment, all that stress. My only bright thought was that I was going to see Gideon.
Klein's aunt Reginka arrived a few days after Ilona and Lisa. Other members of the family were in Terezín, too, if only briefly, en route to their deaths. The Kulkas from České Budějovice arrived for a few days in April 1942, before being deported to the Izbica ghetto. Aunt Eliška, uncle Vítězslav and their daughters Hanna and Zuzana died in Izbica, and Hary and Arnost were murdered in Majdanek later that year. Additional relatives made brief appearances. Klein's aunt and uncle, Julius and Anna Marmorstein, along with their children Karel and Milan, arrived in Terezín towards the end of June 1942, but by the middle of July had been murdered in the Maly Trostenets extermination camp, south-west of Minsk. Aunt Isabela, whom Lisa remembered with such fondness from the Přerov days, was also in the ghetto. Isabela's sister, Paula Schenk, and her husband, Jindřich, arrived on the same transport as Julius and Anna, but were then transported to their deaths in Treblinka in October.
14 - First Cultural Activities and Terezín's First Piano
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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Summary
Initially proscribed by the Nazis, clandestine cultural activities started to take place in early December, largely to relieve the tedium and poverty in which the first inmates found themselves, but also as a direct result of the first executions. Nine men from Klein's AK group were caught for the ‘offence’, punishable by death, of smoking or of smuggling out letters to their loved ones. The writer Mirko Tuma, imprisoned in the ghetto from its early days, explains the connection between the first cultural activities and the arrests:
When the news came that they were thrown into an improvised death row, a group of us found ourselves in a forlorn stable. Sitting on straw and half-insane from pain and fear, helplessness and hate, we started to mumble poems we knew from memory. There was nothing else in that poorly lit stable but art, that is, the Pascalian key to immortality. We agreed that on the night of the hangings we would recite Heine in the brilliant Czech translation of Otokar Fischer, a great Czech Jewish poet who died before the onslaught. […] The day of the hangings came. We stood – eyes closed – near the gallows constructed under the German supervision by concentrationaires. The hangman was an inmate, a butcher by profession, and later the first suicide in the camp. That night in one of the barracks, without uttering a word about the horror scene we scarcely witnessed, we recited a verse about the ‘hated German Majesty driving through the ravished lands towards its execution’.
Klein's friends and fellow musicians, among them the pianist and conductor Rafael Schächter and the violinists Karel Fröhlich and Heini Taussig, as well as other musicians and actors, were there with him from the start. There is no evidence that he contributed to any of the early informal concerts which took place in the barracks in those first few days and, as a piano was not yet available for the prisoners, it is unlikely that he did. But some of the other musicians brought their instruments with them, although strictly it was not permitted.3 Even so, by the end of December, the Council of Elders reached an agreement with their captors, and the Nazi authorities sanctioned what were known as Kammeradschaftsabende (Fellowship Evenings).
4 - Prague Compositions I
- David Fligg, University of Chester
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- Book:
- Don't Forget about Me
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 18 November 2022, pp 82-93
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- Chapter
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Summary
Klein's experience as a performer increased throughout the 1930s. Nor was he idle as a composer. An encounter with a leading contemporary composer, then visiting Prague, inspired him to complete one of his first compositions extant from that decade. In 1933, Darius Milhaud, a member of the so-called Les Six group of French composers, visited Prague at the invitation of the ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music), still today the foremost international forum for the promotion of new music; its Czech chapter was then especially active. Klein's Little Suite for piano, dated 27 April 1933, is his only surviving composition since the Suite lyrique of almost four years earlier – at least, there is no evidence to suggest that he composed anything between 1929 and 1933; his intense piano studies might have been the reason for his compositional silence.
The Little Suite comprises two short movements, an Andante followed by a Vivace, with an inscription at the end, ‘After Milhaud's concert’. In all likelihood, judging from the notation of the first movement in particular, and the single date it bears, the piece was written quickly, in a flash of Milhaud-inspired creativity. In the first movement, Klein is clearly experimenting with the type of jazz-influenced harmony that Milhaud uses. The second movement is a rapid nine bars, which tries to capture the velocity and unbounded energy of pieces such as Milhaud's 1923 jazz-like ballet score La Création du monde (‘The Creation of the World’), or his earlier ballet Le boeuf sur le toit (‘The Ox on the Roof ’). Although there seems to be no record of what he might have heard at that 1933 concert, this modern, Gallic style was something which clearly impressed him, and was championed by sections of the Czech avant-garde generally.
Apart from attending classes in general musicianship as a part-time student at the Conservatoire, Klein was not receiving any formal composition tuition at this time, and would not do so until his studies with Alois Hába began in 1939. Consequently, a work such as the Little Suite, not especially remarkable apart from the age of its creator, is unencumbered by compositional theory.