The Landsberg Youth Choir under the direction of Marianne Lösch at the anniversary concert with "Yeruzalayim", with which they had also successfully participated in the Leipzig Choir Festival 2022. © Greiner
Landsberg – "It's the culmination of a week full of encounters." Mayor Doris Baumgartl introduced the double anniversary "75 Years of Israel" and "75 Years of Leonard Bernstein and the DP Orchestra" on Sunday, visibly moved. This was preceded by discussions, an Insta-Walk, a music workshop with the Israeli pianist Guy Mintus and the "Landsberg Dialogues". A week dedicated to music: as a language that connects.
The Landsberg DP camp, in the Saarburg barracks, was one of the largest in Bavaria, Baumgartl recalled. The DPs, who described themselves as the 'remnant of the rescued', "were liberated, but they were not free." Many were waiting for the longed-for departure from the 'land of the perpetrators'. But the DP camp was also the starting point: for Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta'ot, which organized emigration to Palestine in the Kratzerkeller. Baumgartl held out the prospect of deepening cooperation with its members: "We will do everything we can to ensure that the much-vaunted 'Never Again!' is actively lived."
Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich, spoke of the euphoria she experienced as a 15-year-old when the State of Israel was founded: "I was 15 at the time and was dancing with the others in the street." Ben-Gurion's proclamation had raised hopes for a future for which Bernstein's concert had already set the pace "in the universal language of music" four days earlier. Ben-Gurion's visit to the Landsberg DP camp in 1946 triggered just as much euphoria, recalled Carmela Shamir, Consul General of the State of Israel for Southern Bavaria. The DPs "wanted to become visible, especially here in Landsberg, this city that was so important under National Socialism."
Even today, constant attention is important, according to the chairman of the "Liberation Concert" association, Alex Dorow (MdL). There is a need for a "critical appraisal" in the face of a society that is increasingly isolating itself in social media bubbles and looking for simple solutions. "History is not the past, but the teacher is how to shape the future".
The Vice-President of the Bavarian State Parliament, Karl Freller, also aimed at this and pointed out the "current threat to the State of Israel". One can and must also criticize, for example, the "at least problematic judicial reform". "But it depends on the tone," Freller said, referring to the anti-Zionism he sees in Germany. The fact that the confrontation with current anti-Semitism is elementary was also emphasized by Bavaria's anti-Semitism commissioner Dr. Ludwig Spaenle: "One must not hide behind memory."
Abba Naor, survivor of the Kaufering subcamp, expressed himself movingly and with his typical wink: What the initiator of the "Liberation Concert" Karla Schönebeck was doing was a "matter of luck" and he was glad to have "met the woman with the little dog". Because now to be able to witness how young people in the "Liberation Concert" association are interested in Israel and history gives him "courage to live".
75 Years of Leonard Bernstein and the DP Orchestra
Pianist Guy Mintus gave a foretaste of the anniversary concert with his interpretation of the "Fiddler on the Roof" in the town hall. In the Stadttheater he accompanied his wife Naama Nachum - and shone with the youth chamber orchestra of the Landsberg Music School under the direction of Birgit Abe with Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" - characterized by the feather-light touch and the irrepressible desire for jazz and improvisation of the young pianist. In the meantime, it has almost become a Liberation Concert classic.
But it was above all the young concert participants who brought the past into the present: Melanie and Franziska Überreiter at the piano with a medley from Bernstein's "West Side Story". The Landsberg Youth Choir under the direction of Marianne Lösch, who thrilled the audience with "El Haderech" and "Yeruzalaim". The Youth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Abe, which played Bizet and Elgar. And last but not least, the young people who brought historical figures to life: the artist Samuel Bak, who had his first exhibition at the age of 13 in the DP camp; Chaim Arbeitman, who was able to give a concert in Berlin in 1993; and sisters Henia and Fania Durmashkin, singer and pianist in the DP Orchestra.
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Entry in the Golden Book of the City
Following the ceremony in the town hall, Knobloch signed the city's Golden Book: "I thank the city of Landsberg for honoring the past, preparing the present for the future and giving people the opportunity to remember. I would like to express my special thanks to the Mayor in this regard."
The first Vice-President of the Bavarian State Parliament, Karl Freller, also immortalized himself in the Golden Book, as did two guests from the USA: Sonia Beker, whose parents Fanny Durmashkin and Max Beker "got to know and love" each other in the Landsberg DP camp, as Mayor Baumgartl explained in her speech. And Abraham Peck, professor of contemporary history in the USA, who was born in 1946 in the Landsberg DP camp.
