For nine years now, pianist Amit Weiner has been dealing with Jewish composers who perished in the Holocaust.
"There was nothing to eat in the ghetto, but there was an orchestra."
Weiner
Photography:
Dalia Desiatnik
For nine years now, pianist Amit Weiner has been involved in the music of Jewish composers who perished in the Holocaust.
It started in 2012, when he created a concert called "Music in the Valley of Photography", in which works by composers such as Gideon Klein, Mordechai Gvirtig, Pavel Haas, Erwin Schulhoff, Victor Ullman and Ilse Weber were played.
Today, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the concert will be held online as part of an event of the Israeli Embassy in Geneva and the UN, and will be broadcast live on the UN website at 1:00 PM (Israel time).
"I initiated this project in collaboration with Yad Vashem and the Jerusalem Academy of Music in 2012," says Weiner.
"It started with several concerts accompanied by explanations of the composers that took place at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. In 2016 I started working with the Foreign Ministry and embassies around the world. I help them organize concerts around this music, and travel to play in different countries with local musicians. Virtual in collaboration with the UN.
We thought what could be done, I can not fly there for a concert, so we made three videos with an Israeli singer and Kinneret, while I was at the piano.
The music is by composers who were murdered in the Holocaust.
After the clips are broadcast, I will talk about the project and the music. "The event will also include speeches by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Israeli Ambassador to Geneva, Meirav Ayalon Shachar.
In recent years Weiner has held these concerts in Singapore, China, Nepal, Thailand, Myanmar, Taiwan and Vietnam, where he has played with local musicians.
In concerts, the audience learns about the history of Jewish culture in Europe during the Holocaust, and about the efforts of the Jews in the concentration camps and ghettos to preserve an active cultural life against all odds.
"The audiences in East Asia know almost nothing about the Holocaust," Weiner says, "and the very fact that they are exposed to this matter of the Holocaust through music - very moving. I think music touches emotions directly, without the mediation of words. It goes straight to the heart. I talk to The audience for the various composers, the best known of whom is Mordechai Gvirtig, who was also a poet. He wrote the lyrics and melody of 'The Burning Town.'
"Everywhere I go, the local embassy helps me find local musicians to play with me in concert.
I send them the pieces and we do rehearsals.
After the music, I explain to the audience the context and meaning of the works, and also give a general background about the Holocaust. "
According to Weiner," For the Jews, music was always something strong, even before the Holocaust, and it continued under these impossible conditions of the ghettos.
Every ghetto in Poland had a symphony orchestra.
Many times there was nothing to eat but there was an orchestra.
"In the extermination camps for music, there was sometimes a shocking role, like an orchestra in Auschwitz that actually played so that they would not hear the shouts that came from the gas chambers."