On April 14, attendees of Adas Israel Congregation’s Yom HaShoah commemoration can hear Yiddish music written in Holocaust-era concentration camps.
“The songs tell a story when you look at them all together: a story about resilience and the human experience during the Holocaust,” said Adas Israel Cantor Arianne Brown. “They take you from ghetto to ghetto to concentration camp to displaced persons camp.”
This “emotional journey” is part of “Neshome Lider: Songs of Resilience from the Holocaust” in honor of Yom HaShoah, which falls on April 13 to 14 this year. Brown has been working with Yiddish musician Zalmen Mlotek and his son, Rabbi Avram Mlotek, to create this musical program.
While Adas Israel observes Holocaust Remembrance Day every year, “Neshome Lider” is unique to this year’s event.
Zalmen Mlotek is the artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, the world’s longest continuous running Yiddish theater.
“I had the joy of performing with them and coaching with him many, many years ago, and we continued to perform together from time to time,” Brown said of Mlotek. “I would call him the world’s leading authority on Yiddish music, and he interprets it at the piano the way nobody else can, coming from a really deep knowledge of the language and the music.”
Mlotek’s mother, Chana Mlotek, had been one of the musicologists who researched and collected many of the songs written in the ghettos and concentration camps during the Holocaust and published them as collections of sheet music.
“That really has made the music accessible and has given it a life beyond the one it originally had,” said Brown, adding that many of these songs had only been performed, never written down.
The cantor spoke to the resilience of the music’s original composers.
“There were theaters, there were shows, there were concerts in the ghetto,” Brown said. “And these songs, some of them, really took hold because they resonated with a shared experience, so the songs would travel by ear.”
Chana Mlotek helped preserve these songs for the next generations, and now her son and grandson continue her work to this day.
“So, there was no one else I would want to invite to collaborate on this,” Brown said. “There’s just such a deep sensitivity and I think that all three of us really care deeply about sharing this music, reaching people in that way.”
The April 14 event is more than a musical performance. It also offers storytelling and biographical information about some of the composers.
“We go from song to song, and in between the songs, there’s a narrative thread — there’s narration in between,” Brown said.
The lyrics will be displayed on a screen during the program to ensure that the meaning is accessible.
“The important part is that we engage with, remember, take lessons from the Holocaust,” Brown said. “Some people will do best taking a lecture or reading a novel. Music is a powerful tool. Music has a way of really touching people. In order to reach those emotional moments, I think it is important to come together as a community, and music can bind that gathering together.”
One song, “Yugnt Hymn,” — “Youth Hymn” — was dedicated to the children’s and youth club in the Vilna ghetto.
“When you hear it, just imagining a group of children singing, you know how that would have probably helped the people around them just to hear children’s voices, and it’s very powerful,” Brown said.
She spoke to the songs’ lyrics: “The words are very powerful … It’s like reading or hearing a first-person testimony.”
“The music itself is first-person testimony, both the lyrics and the marriage of lyrics to meaningful music,” Brown said. “And when you put those things together, you have the ability to reach people’s hearts and souls.”
In Yiddish, “neshome” means “soul,” she added.
Though this event is a Holocaust remembrance commemoration, not all of the songs are sad.
“You’ll come away with not only the sad emotions, but there’s also a sense of inspiration that people lived through this and they wrote a song about looking to springtime or about the youth bonding together towards a brighter future,” Brown said. “So, I think there’s tremendous inspiration to be had.”
The Adas Israel community will also continue a longstanding tradition: a program known as Garden of the Righteous, which annually honors a non-Jew who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust.
This year’s honoree is Dutch social worker Geertruida Wijsmuller, who helped shepherd more than 10,000 Jewish children to safety through the pre-World War II Kindertransport.
Isabel Bauer-Langsdorf, one of the children she saved, and her daughter, Julie Langsdorf, will tell the story of Wijsmuller’s courage. “It’s incredibly special that she’ll be a part of this,” Brown said of Bauer-Langsdorf.
The April 14 event will largely center the “Neshome Lider” program.
“From a historical perspective, it’s important to preserve these songs because this is what our people wrote during unimaginable times,” Brown said. “For the point of view of now and the future, it’s important to sing these songs because it connects us to the past, and hopefully, the songs touch us in a way that moves us to continue the legacy.”
