PtJA at Holocaust Memorial Day Events

The PtJA took part in two important events to mark the 2016 Holocaust Memorial Day, whose theme was Don’t Stand By.

On Sunday 24 January, the well-attended Leeds Civic Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration at Leeds Town Hall featured a performance of a work discovered by PtJA’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Steve Muir. He came across “Mogen Avos” (Shield of our Fathers) by Joseph Gottbeter of Rostov-on-Don, last year in Cape Town, South Africa. It was among the papers of Cantor Froim Spektor, who knew Gottbeter in Rostov. Very little of Gottbeter’s music was thought to have survived the Second World War. But the HMD performance of “Mogen Avos”, performed by the Clothworkers Consort of Leeds conducted by Steve, was its first in around 100 years.

Clothworkers Consort of Leeds in rehearsal for HMD commemoration

On Holocaust Memorial Day itself, 27 January, Steve, along with Co-Investigator Dr. Lisa Peschel, and Project Consultant Dr. David Fligg, were guest speakers at York University’s ‘Reflections’ event. The team’s presentation, ‘Performing the Jewish Archive: Reflections on Lost Voices’, outlined their most recent discoveries of literary, musical and theatrical works created by Jewish artists in situations of internment, exile and emigration. The session concluded with a short film that David made of his visit to the remains of the largely-forgotten Auschwitz slave-labour sub-camp of Fürstengrube where the composer and pianist Gideon Klein was murdered.