Judith Johnson
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Holocaust Memorial Day - Anita Lasker Wallfisch

27/1/2013

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One of the many benefits of working for some years at an independent school in Kent as alumni officer was the opportunity to attend concerts and lectures, part of the school's cultural programme on offer to students, and the wider community. Having always been interested in the history of World War Two and the Holocaust, I was particularly drawn to hearing Anita Lasker Wallfisch speak. I relate here what I recall of this lecture.

Anita had not expected a large audience, actually, on this occasion, but had expressly come to speak to the cast of Playing for Time, the Arthur Miller play based on the memoir of Fania Fenelon. Anita had been a member of the women's orchestra at Auschwitz, which is what the play is about. At the time of the play's writing, she and some other survivors of the women's orchestra had been to see Arthur Miller, and asked him to amend the text. Apparently he declined their request to change the piece, for whatever reasons he had.

They said Fenelon's book misrepresented the truth as they saw it, that the women in this group had not been bitchy and critical of each other, but had supported and cared for each other, and that it was only this that had got them through. They would look out for each other, and if they noticed that one of their number had stopped washing, for example, they would exhort them to start again, for they knew that this was a very bad sign of giving up the struggle to go on. 
 
The power of this lecture lay in the fact that Anita Lasker Wallfisch, though now in her seventies, was speaking to the Sixth Form girls of her experience at their age, still painfully fresh in her memory. She was born and raised in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), and when her parents were transported to the camps, she and her sister Renata, then in their mid-teens, were not deported as they were working in a paper factory. They took part in underground activities, helping to forge papers for French slave labourers to cross back into France.

She told a story of their group leader issuing them with cyanide pills, in case they got picked up by the Gestapo. One day, he asked them for  their pills back, saying that he would return them shortly, which he did. When they were arrested, soon after, as they were trying to escape to France, Anita and her sister took their pills, but nothing happened. He had replaced them with sugar pills. He must have had his reasons for this action, but after the War when Anita met him again, and remonstrated with him, he asked her whether she was not glad, as after all she and Renata had survived.

They were initially held in cells in Berlin, and then they were both sent, on different dates, to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. Anita arrived first. When she was being processed on arrival, the young woman (a Jewish prisoner herself) cutting her hair remarked on her pretty shoes. Anita had spilt some ink on these shoes some time back, and had dyed them black, and then decorated them with little red pom-poms to cheer them up. Anita had heard the stories about the camps - she had an idea of what was in store - and said to the girl she would be welcome to have them as she would not be needing them. When the girl asked Anita what she did before the war, she mentioned that she played the cello, and at this the girl said that she would send someone immediately to Alma Rose, who had asked always to be told if a musician arrived - she needed players for the women's orchestra. There were several orchestras or bands at Auschwitz made up of Jewish players, who were required to play not only when surviving prisoners went in and out to work duties, but also for the SS in off-duty hours. The women's orchestra was directed by Alma Rose, herself an inmate, and the niece of Gustav Mahler. The standard was expected to be high, in spite of the obvious depredations the players were subject to, and rehearsals were rigorous. Alma Rose knew that their lives depended on the quality of their playing.

Anita was accepted for the orchestra - they lacked a cellist. About a week later, another stroke of fate saved her sister. On her arrival at Auschwitz, again in the hair-cutting room, she spotted Anita's distinctive shoes being worn by one of the girls, and on asking her where she had got them, told the girl they had belonged to her sister. A messenger was sent by the girl straightaway to Anita, who begged Alma Rose to take her sister in. Alma Rose agreed to do so, and said she could be given a job as a runner for the orchestra. The girls both survived Auschwitz, and were sent to Belsen on the same transport as Anne Frank. 
 
I asked Anita after the lecture whether they had played Beethoven, and she said no, that Beethoven, the great German composer, whose work she loved and admired, was not music they had played in the camps. The usual fare requested was light music, for example Franz Lehar.

After the war Anita met up with another survivor, Peter Wallfisch, who she had known as a schoolboy in Breslau. They were married, and were to go on to musical careers, Anita playing cello with the English Chamber Orchestra. Anita said that she was able to travel to Germany with the orchestra and easily converse with young Germans, but that with those who had lived in the War, she always felt uncomfortable, and could never help wondering whether she was looking at the person who had contributed to the transport and murder of her parents.

Raphael Wallfisch, the son of Anita and Peter, has become a great cellist himself, and his son, Benjamin follows in his footsteps.  Anita, as so many Holocaust survivors, worked hard at building a new life in England, and did not dwell on her wartime experiences, but felt, when she had brought up her family, that she should put down her story for their benefit, and wrote her memoir Inherit the Wind. It takes its place in the body of work which records the appalling events of the Nazi Holocaust.

Anita is in her late eighties now. I understand she still spends time speaking to groups of schoolchildren about her story. In 2011 she received an Honorary Doctorate from Cambridge
University.
 
Website about Music and the Holocaust:  www.holocaustmusic.ort.org 


 
 
 
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Reading Charles Dickens

19/1/2013

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I was hugely excited to be given a white-paper Kindle for Christmas. We are not over-technologicised in our house (I don't have an i-anything!) and I sat as a schoolgirl transfixed at the unveiling on BBC's Tomorrow's World of the amazing new invention - a fax machine, and the thrilling demonstration by Rolf Harris of the stylophone.
It's wonderful to think that with this gift (the Kindle, not a Stylophone!) and the work of many generous contributors, the great treasure-chest of classical literature is now instantly accessible, gratis.  I have however made it one of my goals this year not to acquire any new books until 2014, but to get through some of my book-pile. I wouldn't be surprised if I've amassed 5 years' worth of reading. One of those which I've been meaning to re-read for years now (and last year being the bi-centenary of his birth) is David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I have a dusty old copy in tiny print, so I downloaded the free Kindle version and started reading.
 
After declaring I could never be seduced away from the joys of hard copy books I found it beautifully easy to read in this format. I'd read David Copperfield at my grammar school. Although an avid reader, I didn't enjoy the process of reading books in class much, analysing, going over the same passages, writing essays etc. And what's more, I reckon I didn't really appreciate Dickens fully until I'd seen a bit more of life, struggled a bit, worked through some difficult times and fallen at a few waysides. 
  
Having said all that, I have to say that our son Tom, when quite a small child, used to listen with rapt attention when my husband read A Christmas Carol to him  - guess that RADA training had its uses! 
 
I loved reading David Copperfield again.  The language is naturally of its period, and some passages can be a bit less dynamic than modern readers may be used to, but it was a rich treat. I found myself, often, laughing and weeping in the same chapter. There are too many memorable characters and descriptions in the story to mention, but the chapter dealing with the tempest on the Norfolk coast and its aftermath was truly thrilling. And I will always love Betsey Trotwood!
 
I gave away copies of The Tale of Two Cities on World Book Day last year. One of the readers, a very nice man who delivers at my office, who had enjoyed reading All Quiet on the Western Front (my first World Book Day give-away) the year before, confessed that he had not been able to get very far with it. He found he couldn't work out what was going on in the story.  I admired his honesty, but was sad he hadn't been able to finish the book - it's such a magnificent story. 
 
Dickens gave public readings of his own work which, by all accounts, were gripping, and apparently exhausting, as he put so much into them. These were frowned upon by the literary classes and considered to be populist and rather vulgar. In an age before television, film, radio, or even recorded music, it must have been a powerful experience to witness his dramatic rendering of scenes like the murder of Nancy from Oliver Twist. I have read that  his performances often lasted over three hours, that he held his audiences spellbound and had the ability to transform himself into the character he was describing.  
 
Occasionally I think a really good film version can convey the author's purpose. My Dad played Samuel Pickwick in the 1952 film version of Pickwick Papers (the original Dr Who, William Hartnell, appears briefly as an Irate Cabman). Dad didn't study the book, but picked out a scene from the script and based his performance on that. Somehow he seemed to capture the big-hearted spirit of Pickwick. The wonderful cast of British actors bring out the whimsy and comedy in Dickens' characters as well as their innocence, and the mayhem that often ensues as they are taken in by the villains of the piece. I watched the DVD again recently and found myself highly amused and deeply moved. 
  
I'm sure Dickens' great legacy, the beauty and power of his prose, will continue to be discovered by countless generations to come. I plan to make good use of my Kindle and carry on reading! 
Picture
James Hayter in The Pickwick Papers
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A Visit to Aberdare

4/1/2013

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PictureEbenezer Chapel, Trecynon, Aberdare
The New Year is regarded as a time for new things, hopes and aspirations, but this year I find I am still feeling sad after the passing away of my mother-in-law in Wales. We travelled down after Christmas to collect her ashes from the undertaker, and we made a journey to Aberdare in the Cynon Valley.  My son and his girlfriend were with us, and my husband walked us round Trecynon, the district of Aberdare where his family lived for generations.
 
After hearing many of the family stories over the years, it was affecting to see how nearby everything was. They could easily have walked from the house where my father-in-law was born and which became their family home after their marriage to visit friends and relatives in the streets nearby. Most of their needs were catered for within a very small area: shops, school, chapel, Free Library, and the Coliseum Theatre, where they took part in the amateur theatricals. The beautiful Aberdare park, where huge processions from the various chapels paraded at Whitsun, was also nearby. Opposite the house is a bus-stop, where, in years gone by, the miners would gather for the bus to the pit, and where they would sometimes sing while they were waiting. This was an integrated life, where people were sure of their place in their community, even though life was a struggle particularly through the years of the Great Depression and the World Wars.
 
It was upsetting to see Ebenezer Chapel, where the family had worshipped, up for sale, and derelict. The minister at my mother-in-law’s funeral, an Aberdare man himself, spoke of the moral force this Chapel had once had (formidable was the word he used), its influence in the town and marvellous choral singing. An erudite man, he had clearly used this adjective most particularly – the Oxford Dictionary of English defines formidable as inspiring fear or respect through being impressively large, powerful, intense, or capable. Seventeen years ago, when my father-in-law died, I recall the wonderful hymns sung at his funeral there – and the ‘hwyl’ (a Welsh word, roughly translated as soul/enthusiasm/spirit) with which the congregation sang in his honour. At the annual Cymanfa Ganus (hymn-singing festivals) once held here, the chapel was so full that extra chairs had to be set out in the aisles. In fact, the Cymanfa Ganu movement originated in Aberdare in 1859.
 
My mother-in-law’s grandfather, miner Richard Wigley, sang tenor in the celebrated South Wales Choral Union (‘Y Côr Mawr’) led by Griffith Rhys Jones (Caradog) of Aberdare, which won prizes in 1872 and 1873 at the Crystal Palace, London.
 
The religious revivals of the 19th century gave rise to the building of chapels, great and small, all over Wales. They undoubtedly had a binding and guiding influence on the people caught up in the furore of industrial development in South Wales, but today a great many of them are up for sale or closed. As GM Trevelyan, the historian said; “The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...  once, on  this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow.”
 
My in-laws were proud of Aberdare. In its heyday it boasted many large fine and well-used buildings like the Ritz Cinema, the Temperance Hotel, and great Victorian Grammar schools. Today it has a sadly run-down aspect, though plans are afoot for urban regeneration. It has suffered the fate of so many towns where heavy industry and work have moved away. The
Little Theatre, opened in 1931 by the Trecynon Amateur Dramatic Society, is now a storage shed for window-frames, we heard.
 
But the people of Aberdare are as warm and friendly as ever. We had lunch at Servini’s Café in the town, where Mam and Dad may well have enjoyed an ice-cream when they were children. Afterwards we called in on a relative for several cups of tea and a long chat. Here’s
wishing the people of Aberdare a Happy New Year.

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    Lifelong bookworm, love writing too. Have been a theatrical agent and reflexologist among other things, attitude to life summed up by Walt Whitman's MIRACLES.

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