Activities

The following events and activities were either organised by or associated with the Music, Memory and Migration project.

Holocaust Memorial Day, Leeds Town Hall, 27 January 2013
- David Fligg gave a talk on the composer Gideon Klein, and introduced his folksong settings composed in Terezin. Dr Steve Muir then led an ensemble of singers from Leeds University and Leeds College of Music in a performance of one of these folksongs, ‘Uz mne kone vyvádeji’.

Royal Academy of Music Czech Series talk, ‘Melody, Passion and Persecution’, 18 February 2013
- David Fligg gave a talk on Gideon Klein, Hans Krasa, and their role as the true successors to the musical tradition of Dvořák and Janáček.

‘Music and Power’ symposium, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, 28 February–2 March 2013
- Steve Muir gave a paper ‘Hasidism and Mitnagdism in the Russian Empire: the (mis)use of Jewish music in Polish–Lithuanian Russia’, partly based on research into the assumed Lithuanian origins of South Africa Jewish music
- Published version will hopefully be included in special editions of the Journal of Musicology or a similar outlet in due course

Meetings in Washington DC and New York City, March 2013
- Steve Muir met with Bret Web (3 March 2013) and Michael Beckerman (5 March 2013) to discuss their participation and possible contributions to the project’s activities and outcomes

Visit to Madison, Wisconsin, 18–19 March 2013
- Funded by a Worldwide Universities Network Research Mobility Programme grant, Lisa Peschel visited Madison, Wisconsin, to explore potential collaboration with the University of Wisconsin

Archival research, Auschwitz and Fürstengrube, April 2013
- David Fligg visits the Auschwitz archive to research Gideon Klein’s deportation and final days in the Fürstengrube Sub-Camp of Auschwitz

Symposium, ‘Principles of Engagement: Scripts from the Terezín Ghetto Today’, University of York, Sunday 12 May 2013
- Sponsored by the Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York
- Organised by Lisa Peschel
- Participation also from Steve Muir and David Fligg.
- Sessions and discussions include:
  - The Problem of Authenticity
  - History and Performance
  - Political and Ethical Complications
  - Humour and the Holocaust

Visits to assess archival collections in Italy and Romania, May 2013
- Bret Werb of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, visits Rome and Barletta (Italy) and Cluj (Romania) to assess archival collections related to the project
- Part-funded by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC

Archival research, Jewish Museum, Prague, and ‘The Defiant Requiem’, Rafael Schaechter Institute, 5–9 June 2013
- David Fligg conducts archival research on Gideon Klein in the Jewish Museum, Prague
- Dr Fligg will also attend a performance of Murray Sidlin’s ‘The Defiant Requiem’ on 6 June at St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague

Audience response experimental performance, University of York, 13 June 2013
- Organised by Dr Lisa Peschel
- A closed performance of The Smoke of Home to an audience of volunteers to gauge audience responses and test hypotheses

UK premiere of The Smoke of Home, a play written in the World War II Jewish Ghetto at Theresienstadt, University of York, 16 June 2013
- Organised by Lisa Peschel
- “In times of crisis, why do some societies respond with art? The UK premiere of The Smoke of Home, a play written in the World War II Jewish Ghetto at Theresienstadt, forms the centrepiece of an afternoon of engagement with this question. In the opening panel researchers will discuss several examples of cultural response to crisis, from theatre in Theresienstadt to dance during the Lebanese Civil War to community arts practices in impoverished neighbourhoods in the UK. The panel will be followed by the first UK performance of The Smoke of Home, co-authored by Theresienstadt prisoners Zdeněk Eliáš and Jiří Stein. In this one-act play, reflecting the prisoners’ own situation but set during the Thirty Years’ War, the two young authors dared to ask: what if the homes we long to return to after the war will be radically changed? The performance will be followed by a brief discussion featuring Dorothy Elias, daughter of the co-author and translator of the play, and Lisa Peschel, editor of Performing Captivity, Performing Escape: Cabarets and Plays from the Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto“

Archival and ethnographic research visit, Cape Town, July 2013
- Funded by a Small Grant from The British Academy, Steve Muir visits Cape Town to examine private family archival material from before the Second World War concerning the Jewish composers Froim Spektor, Dovid Eisenstadt, and Samuel Kibel
- Dr Muir will be hosted by The Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research, University of Cape Town
- Publication of at least one work by these composers, accompanied by historical and contextual commentary, is envisaged as a direct outcome of this research
- The visit will also hopefully feature a public lecture delivered under the auspices of the Cape Town Jewish Museum or Holocaust Centre, and discussions with The South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation‘s director regarding future research collaboration and possible events

International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, 33rd Annual Conference, 4–9 August 2013
- David Fligg will deliver a paper on Gideon Klein at this conference, titled ‘On the family trail of Gideon Klein (1919-1945)’

Biographical research, Czech Republic, 15–30 September 2013
- Lisa Peschel visits the Czech Republic to undertake biographical research on two Terezin authors of theatrical works with music

RMA Annual Conference, 2013 – panel on ‘Music, Memory and Migration in the Post-Holocaust Jewish Experience’, 19–21 September 2013
- The panel will take place on Friday 20th September 2013, and will comprise the following short papers, followed by open discussion:
  - David Fligg, ‘Positioning Gideon Klein’
  - Lisa Peschel, ‘Performing songs from the Terezin Ghetto for today’s audiences’
  - Stephen Muir, ‘Commemorating pre-Holocaust East European music-making: musical migration and memory in South Africa’
  - Joseph Toltz, ‘Silent transformation: public communal representation and private musical memories of Holocaust survivors in Australia’

Songs from a Forgotten World: Jewish Choral Music, Old and New, University of Leeds School of Music, 14 March 2014, 1.00pm
- A concert performed by the Leeds University School of Music Choir, conducted by Steve Muir, featuring works from the Jewish choral tradition old and new. Most prominently, the concert includes the modern-day premiere of Dovid Ayznshtat’s Passover Cantata Chad Gadya (One little goat) for mixed choir, in a new edition by Dr Stephen Muir. Ayznshtat’s manuscript is among the papers of Froim Spektor whose papers Dr Muir has reseached in Cape Town. The concert also features classics of the Jewish liturgical tradition by Louis Lewandowski and Salomone Rossi, and more recent works by Ian Sapiro and Gregory Rose.