Oppression Project: The Era of Incarcerated Jewish score (The early 1930’s – the mid-latter 1940’s)

1. Running head: THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE Oppression Project: The Era of Incarcerated Jewish score (The early 1930’s – the mid-latter 1940’s) Jacob R. Stotler

2. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 2 The Era of Incarcerated Jewish Score: “Any of One Politic” (The early 1930’s to the mid-latter 1940’s). Introduction of Oppression in Nazi Occupied Germany The German term for “Art” is “Kunst”; and for “Music”, Germans know this as “Musik”. Secondly, the Nazi term that haunted Jewish work and “Musik” during the “Holocaust” and WWII, was a preceding term to the art and music of “inferior races.”“Degenerate,” was often an appendage that followed art and music that was produced or promoted advertising or referencing anyone outside of the Nazi army during that time (Smith, 1997). The German government in which drove the attacks and oppression among the Jewish Germans were said to have drawn a connection between American colored jazz musicians and the jazz in which was being conducted in Germany by people of the Jewish population, to justify labeling Jewish German musicians and artists as “degenerate.”“Degenerate” in English is thus an adjective that describes something as “degrading” or “having sunk or declined.” The paper follows a structure that meets three major global requirements confronting the global topics of cultural diversity separating the sophisticated from the barbaric, the rise and inheritances of tradition, and the interconnectedness between the Jewish Germans / Jewish Europeans among other oppressed societies (Degenerate, 2019; Langer, 2018). Propaganda and the Video-graph During this time and during WWII, music held an everlasting strength in the background of the history, and these movements are needed to define and understand the opposing aspects of life in Germany during the 1930’s –1940’s, especially regarding the dictatorship that had just come into power. Even understanding Germany during this time as “foreign,” there are no excuses for the atrocities and attacks that took place against Jewish German or Jewish European

3. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 3 people. It became law during this time to segregate and terminate Jewish people, because of the beliefs that supported the politics of the Third Reich. World organizations, foreign people, and foreign nations all became to the mercy of the political movement in Germany at this time. The government in Germany ridiculed people, took advantage of organizations, and abused resources for the fault of what was afterwards known as “the holocaust.” It is said that on the side of the Nazi Army side, music was used for the novel and overt purpose of “propaganda,” as well as the music orchestrated by Nazi marching bands was seen as a display of long over-exaggerative power, interwoven with other Nazi tactics. Black and white video-graphs of this era frame Adolf Hitler indulging in the music played by Nazi soldier marching bands. Videos that portray Adolf Hitler’s attention to the music shows him impressed by the music, and in these videos the nostalgia of the era comes to life, there is a horrible feeling that follows the external pleasure that the leader shows after he steeps his attention into the music; he is calm, a tinge anxious, upright and voluntarily impacted. Even now when researching these two movements in Germany [when typing in “third Reich”], the reign of the Third Reich and the movement of the Jewish Germans sparks the “automated suggestions” from collegiate domain search bars as “art of the Third Reich,”against that of “degenerate music,” (British Movietone, 2015; UW libraries, 2019). The soldiers play music that of a marching band but more so inclusive of loud dominant crashes of symbols and drums that sound barbaric and aggressive, but somehow in measure and disciplined. The percussion sounds as bombs or bullets being projected off; the soldiers all perfectly in tune and marching with painfully high strides and movements and walking gait that is stringently spastic (British Movietone, 2015). This Specific Era and Treatment from the Dictatorship

4. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 4 While during this time Jewish musicians were banned memberships from the German Reich music association; they were oppressed in every way. Acts of the Nazi attack and oppression onward to Jewish Germans has been said to be “brutal, abhorrent to every instinct of decency and justice, racist” [as well as savage and inhumane]. Americans during this time were both inculpating Nazis for the logistical warfare against their own people, but also struggling with segregation [of Afro-Americans] themselves in politics, media and the administration of the country (Puckett, 2011). Jewish Germans were confined to camps and ghettos of oppression and poverty as an administrative action of Nazi reign in the rising of Third Reich [government]; the leader was said to have been taking the approach to save the white race from “degeneration.” While in concentration camps such as Terezin, a Jewish dedicated inmate camp outside of Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, musical composers were known inmates here, among others. Composer’s music has been said to have kept its own individuality and cultural base during this time and within these affairs (Nemtsov & Schroder-Nauenburg, 2000). The music and Operas and other artistic creations certainly must have somehow symbolized or reflected the morbid conditions of the incarceration and life being the target of a governmental genocide, violence and corruption of civility, but the music, records, articles, and video-graphs of these arts and scores of composure avail, and consecrate these works to uphold from any degradation or losing any shape of foci or finesse of the musicians and Jewish Germans / European Germans. Even the music from Jewish transition camps that connected [by Nazi transport] to concentration camps, and places of “extermination,” withheld very refined, complex and biblically illustrated classical music scores and operas. These scores and musical plays and presentations portray an organized multi-dimensional world of sophistication, disciplined

5. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 5 indulgence, love, nostalgia and the frame by frame archetypical composition of vulnerable classical music of wood winds and stringed instruments (Czech Wind Quintet, 2017; RedfernArtsCenter, 2016). The Jewish Germans kept to their own cultural and societal music tastes, legends, styles and musical structures during this era. Jewish musicians have described the music and their attachment to the music during their stay in ghettos and camps during this era. Coco Schuman was a famous German musician that had been an inmate of a concentration camp. He and other Jewish Germans of Terezin were said to have lead lives and used music as a “way to preserve their own humane dignities and [delve] into temporary relief from their horrible daily life” (Nemtsov & Schroder-Nauenburg, 2000; Bylica, 2015). Some of the musicians and artists that contributed to the Jewish German history of music during these horrid years of oppression and antisemitism were such that of Walter Braunfel, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, James Simon, Martin Rozenburg, Jozef Koffler, Laszlo Weiner, Hans Krasa’, Gideon Klein, Sigmund Schul, Berthold Goldschmidt, Erwin Schulhoff, Viktor Ullman, and Pavel Haas. These individuals were perhaps very well known or famous musicians, especially in the area that they resided and perhaps on an even larger scale. (Smith, 1997; Nemtsov & Schroder-Nauenburg, 2000). Jewish Scores and the Feeling of Brittle Etiquette These scores that have been rooted during this era and even mentioned scores that were written / performed at Terezin sound classic, timeless and well scripted; they display fast movement, motion of character, disciplined composition and tight, rigid and tedious chord and finger picking tones on classical stringed instruments. The scores are sophisticated and orchestrated with a complex scheme; the scores advocate a flavor, a similar flavor to what could

6. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 6 as well have been playing behind a well obliged black and white (tanned and yellowed) love story [movie], the sound in every sense is historic, while even the depths of the instruments can be identified to have come from instruments that sounded more like a Victrola, rather than that of the bounce and robust roar and ring that projects from a brand new violin. When the music rings for a couple of notes, the sounds fade like age with struggling pitch, as that of the brittle hollow bodies in which the music is played is exploited, the sound runs out quick compared to that of the rich sounds of new instruments (Czech Wind Quintet, 2017; RedfernArtsCenter, 2016). The sound alone from Pavel Haas’ scores remind us of the evolution of all classical music as per politically and evolutionarily involved. The composer was obviously a pioneer in classical music in general, the language in which is spoke in the scores is foreign and far from a tale that kept only a 4/4 time, which often included musical inputs and fade ins that remind us that basic thought processes are not a foreign language (Czech Wind Quintet, 2017; RedfernArtsCenter, 2016). Brundibar at Terezin While it is stated in history that Nazis had filmed an amazing performance of Pavel Haas Fig. 6.1 while “at” Terezin, the Nazis were said to have used to the film (and score) to deceive worldwide authorities about the conditions at the camp. It is left in history that Pavel Haas was tragically killed by genocidal bombardment after this time, and after the fact that the worldwide authorities had been fooled by Nazi machination, while the authorities were walked upon a path through the camp that had been designed to fool the Red Cross into seeing the claptrap - “the act” of Jewish

7. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 7 peace time, rest and fun within the confinement of Terezin, instead of that of the actual normal daily conditions that were not so humane (RedfernArtsCenter, 2016; Bylica, 2015). At Terezin, one of the performances that was very well known and granted as a valuable performance was that of the children’s play “a performance by children, for children” was that of the Brundibar. Brunidbar, was said to have made it a success, being performed by different parties across the entire world, sometime after the orchestration of the Opera in Terezin. Brundibarwas said to have been a legendary children’s opera in which was latter performed in Austria, the United States, Israel, England, Greece and the Czech Republic (Bylica, 2015, Fig. 6.1 courtesy of RedfernArtsCenter, 2016). The Structure of Light: Jewish Inheritance The importance of Brunidbar was that the children that were confined in Terezin were not only skilled, and talented in this sense, but they were introduced to the structure and discipline of opera itself, and this in turn may have played as both an escape from the harsh conditions of Nazi reign, but also as a support structure for the people involved. These people should be held as the whom were responsible for the Jewish German/ Jewish European tradition, and this culture had fell into their hands, and the sacredness of their culture was in fact where it was, their own, in history during WWII, and while also they performed on the stage as the most well-respected art and composure ever video-graphed. These people carried a segregated form of art through the depths of the inferno and attack on civil Jewish creativity initiated by the Third Reich, thrusting ahead by only the lead of oppression, governmentally coerced poverty and inhumanity (RedfernArtsCenter, 2016; Bylica, 2015).

8. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 8 The children were confined as well as the adults, although they carried out a very solidified and meaningful peace of the Jewish heritage through the camp, and through the art that still is an inspiring opera. The songs of the opera are upbeat and soulful, and the audience (also Jewish Germans / Jewish Europeans having been confined in the camp of Terezin) were sure to have been amazed, and too, may must have felt the light of the outside, and the desire and loyalty of a normal life through the spirit and organization of the opera-music sang by the Jewish children of all sizes, dressed in costumes, singing in a broad-ranged but high pitched unison, that no doubt reflects only the aura and tone of that era past (Bylica, 2015). The American South During the Same Era: “Across Atlantic Comparison” Another aspect of this movement, of the oppression of the Jewish / European Germans in Germany during this period (from the early 1930’s – the mid-latter 1940’s) was seen in the American South. During this period in the South (in the U.S.) Jim Crow laws [laws that demanded and enforced the segregation of the Afro-Americans] were held in high justification within the working system of the American government and American societal law. It is said that during this time [during the 1930’s to the 1940’s], journalist and editors in the newspapers in the American South were criticizing the “inhumane” actions of the Nazi party, but at the same time these Americans were upholding systems that segregated a certain race and skin color within their own culture, and supporting abuse to individuals under a certain criterion (Timeline, 2018; Pucket, 2011). The Nazi acts of warfare against the Jewish Germans / Jewish Europeans were being assimilated and compared to the segregation in the American South during this period, by many- journalists and members of the media, as well as by those of the American South’s “black press.” There is record that states that during the time of German Jewish oppression (where American’s

9. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 9 could routinely access news of the Nazi reign, some of the idealizations of Nazi politics were being hailed and extolled in America, and in the locations where Jim Crow laws were being enforced (Pucket, 2011). The Superintendent of the Alabama state school for mental deficient, and a colleague (a state health officer) [William Partlow and J.N. Baker respectively] were said to have “adopted and supported the use of sterilization after news had struck the Alabama south about mass application of Nazi human experimentation, where Jewish people were being sterilized [to prevent the individuals from being able to reproduce]”. These two individuals, William Partlow and J.N. Baker, were said to have “advocated for the sterilization of the insane as a measure of protection for the public and for health of the white race” (Pucket, 2011). These knots of the societal movements and administration of the American South during this time brought upon condemnation from the Afro-American people, in which some called out the white press, and the politicians and people supporting the laws of the Jim Crow south as “hypocrites,” as media was adamant in describing the actions of the Nazis as “brutal and undemocratic” [and worse], these people also showed the concern with the extremity of the movements taking place as a possible repercussion of the powers being abused in the American South. Some of the people of this society held the evidence of the extermination and violation of decency against the people in Germany, as “an illustration of the threat” upon the Afro- Americans in America (Pucket, 2011). Many African-American musicians were in the historic stride of carrying some of the most treasured blues music to the future, knowingly or not, these movement in the segregated South (in music) were vital to the sound and the applications of fast paced, endeared blues and rock and roll music that stampeded in the 50’s-70’s. Some of the blue’s music that was being

10. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 10 written, during this time and in this area of the American south was carried on, to the electrified music in latter eras. These people too were oppressed, and these people too were carrying on legends and cultural heritages through the application of the music of the civil yet oppressed Afro-American race. (Pucket, 2011; Timeline, 2018; Smithsonian, 2019). A good example of the vitality that this music played would be to connect the musical progressions and chord structures from the Blues of this era [adopted from musicians] such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake and Leadbelly during these years in the 1930’s, onward to the chord progressions of rock and roll music starting with Elvis, The Beatles, The Guess Who, and even chord structures in country artists that were established as “Nashville Famers” (Smithsonian, 2019; Edward, 2015). Outro: An Endowment An analytical dissection of the vitality of the German music during this time that was carried through such camps and custodial coercion places such as Terezin can be said to have stayed there in conservation of the history made, yet were salvaged by teachers after the lawful segregation had ended. The musicians and works from such places of Terezin were well respected, and at times these works may have been the only materialistic means of salvation and livelihood for many those imprisoned. Yet, in the comprehensive approaches that were written in these works, they died there; even with modern day technology and composure, there are few tracks that signify the classical and orchestral complexity that was designed and expressed in scores that came from artists during these years, especially that of Pavel Haas. These scores remain entirely invaluable and priceless, the tracks make up a large era of the German and Jewish history. To put together the tracks of Nazi propaganda marching music comparatively to the tracks recorded by Jewish children and Jewish composures incarcerated in

11. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 11 Nazi camps; the listener ears the discrepancy between machinery and battle, technology, space travel, the race of men against time and enemy, and domination versus that of the sound of high tier instrumentation carried out on ancient and decaying frets and strings, inadequate political policy, intricate and timeless discipline within composure and the “raceless” stride towards an intellectual labyrinth of love, sovereignty and finite but indispensable novelty against the oppression held against them. These unique characteristics of Jewish music during this time show social organization, tradition and the specific coping and adaptation to attacks upon civil life. These movements were connected to other movements throughout the world and can be compared and contrasted to other movements that took place inclusive of music and art throughout the world. The authentic diversity that is shown by Jewish music during these eras earned a specific and original diversity to other movements across the globe and will throughout the ends of history. While Jewish people were not the only reason for the break in war that lead to Freedom among Jewish people during this time and thereafter [in Germany and otherwise], there is a saying that reminds us of the importance of the music behind these eras “Jeder politische”, meaning “any of one politic”: “das musik.”

12. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 12 References British Movietone. (2015). Hitler Sound. [Youtube.com video file]. Retrieved February 5, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGLl0LKsa- g&t=0s&index=10&list=PLqpc1rSLuR90UoeHIR-kotYgR5EX7-TJp . Bylica, K. (2015). The child’s voice: art, poetry and music from the Terzin Concentration Camp for the music classroom. Canadian Music Educator, Etobicoke, Ontario. 56.3. 24-27. Retrieved February 11, 2019 from Retrieved from http://libproxy.uwyo.edu/login/?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1712710978?accountid =14793. Czech Wind Quintet. (2017). Wind Quintet, Op. 10:1. Preludio. Andante ma vivace. [Youtube.com video]. Retrieved February 11, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5jiScQ- bLs&list=PLcnfWTGImIWx32lmIOsNrfBmAyZw-eF5u . Degenerate. (2018). Merriam-Webster online Dictionary. Retrieved February 9, 2019 from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/degenerate . Edward, K. (2015). Suitcases full of blues: the revenant/third man paramount “cabinets of wonder”. ARSC Journal. 46. 2. 217-244. Retrieved February 11, 2019 from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1760210517?pq-origsite=summon. Langer, E. (2018). German jazz guitarist said music helped him survive holocaust. The Washington Post. 30. B.6. Retrieved February 5, 2019 from http://libproxy.uwyo.edu/login/?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1992186370?accountid =14793.

13. THE ERA OF INCARCERATED JEWISH SCORE 13 Nemtsov, J. & Schroder-Nauenburg, B. (2000). Music in the Inferno of the Nazi Terror: Jewish composers in the “Third Reich”. Shofar. 18. 4. 79-100. Retrieved February 5, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2000.0147/. Puckett, D. (2011). Reporting on the Holocaust: the view from Jim Crow Alabama. Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 25. 2. Retrieved February 5, 2019. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/448278. RedfernArtsCenter. (2016). Voices of Terezin – music for survival. [Youtube.com video file]. Retrieved February 5, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL0JYUq00HI . Smith, T. (1997). Non-Nazi music was “degenerate”: [final edition]. Sun Sentinel; Fort Lauderdale [For Lauderdale]. 6. D. Retrieved February 5, 2019 from http://libproxy.uwyo.edu/login/?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/388381926?accountid =14793 . Smithsonian. (2019). Lead Belly: the Smithsonian folkways collection. Smithsonian Collection. 101- 522. Retrieved February 11, 2019 from https://folkways.si.edu/leadbelly . https://search.proquest.com/docview/388381926?pq-origsite=summon UW Libraries. (2019). Articles. Retrieved February 11, 2019 from http://www.uwyo.edu/libraries/ .