Life Stories Became Songs | Israel today

Students at Rimon Music School meet with Holocaust survivors and write songs inspired by their survival stories • The result is the project "My songs are still"

• Holocaust survivors Zehava Boston Schwartz and Rachel Yanai

  Photo: 

  Yossi Yehoshua

Students at Rimon Music School met with Holocaust survivors, heard their stories, and then sat down to write a song about the encounter experience.

This is how the "My Songs Are Still" project was created, which will be broadcast today at 11:00 on the Facebook page of the Petah Tikva Hall of Culture.

The event, directed by Ofer Shafrir, will consist of the stories of the survivors and the songs written by the young musicians from Rimon, inspired by the meetings.

Among the songs written as part of the project are two songs written by Mai Gedalia (25) from Moshav Nir Zvi, a second-year student at Rimon in the music teaching track: "There was hope" written and composed according to Rachel Yanai's story, and "The earth stopped moving" written and composed According to the story of Prof. Haim Haimoff.

"Rachel Yanai told me the story of her survival and even gave me a book she wrote called 'I survived thanks to luck'," says Gedalia.

"The song consists of passages that stood out to me in her book. I added sentences she said, I wanted to express her strength as a human being. She keeps saying she was saved by luck but I could not ignore that it was not only luck but also her character and her inspiring attitude. "She managed to keep herself positive in this difficult reality. Prof. Haimoff gave me excerpts he wrote. From the age of 9 he wrote plays and novels, and it was amazing to go through this process with him. The song is based on one of his songs called '6 in the morning'."

Another song in the project was written and composed by Amir Halevi (26) from Ramat Hasharon, a second-year student at Rimon in the production track.

The name of the song: "I drew a painting." "I wrote the song following my meeting with a survivor named Zehava Boston Schwartz," says Halevy.

"She brought with her to the meeting various letters and materials. Among other things, there was a pile of paintings painted for her by kindergarten children. It threw me into this idea of ​​writing a song from the perspective of a survivor who remembered his time as a child in the Holocaust."

According to Gedalia, "Music allows you to express emotion outwardly and also let emotion seep in. This is what I feel is happening in this project. The songs we created are a way to express the feelings and experiences of Holocaust survivors, their stories, and it also allows their feelings to seep into anyone who listens to songs. It is also a way to commemorate someone who in the future will not be able to tell his own story. " 

According to Halevy, "the idea of ​​the project is to turn the story of the survivor into a song because it's something easier to connect with. It's a way to make accessible to the audience the stories of what happened there. These are not classic Holocaust songs heard in ceremonies, they more express today's music."