Alice's Piano

by Melissa Müller

  When Sattler and Meyer arrived in Theresienstadt in September 1942 they were asked to perform publicly that very week and their fame spread through the ghetto. They played in cellars, in attics, in sick rooms and in the shabbiest places; anywhere where people hungered for the solace of music.

  When a “coffee house” opened in Theresienstadt, Sattler and Meyer were seen there almost every day. They always played without a score and they were always prepared to improvise any melody someone cared to name. In the course of an evening they played not only Russian romances but also English, Danish, Norwegian and American popular songs. More than anything else, however, they played what the audience most wanted to hear: the Jewish songs that had been prohibited by law.

  Sattler and Meyer’s musical talent ensured that they were protected from deportation, but it could not protect them forever. On 28 September 1944 first Sattler, and a few days later Meyer, was transported to the east. But their reputation had even reached Auschwitz and the “Kings of Bar Music” were forced to play day and night at SS parties. It saved them from the gas chamber, but it drove Otto Sattler to attempt suicide. His father had starved to death in Theresienstadt and his wife and three children had been murdered in the gas ovens of Auschwitz soon after they arrived there. But when Sattler tried to throw himself on the electric fence in impotent despair, a guard held him back, saying “You have more music to peform for us!”27

  At the beginning of 1945 Sattler was sent to Sachsenhausen and from there he was later sent on a death march to Dachau, before being liberated on 29 April 1945.

  The survival of his comrade-in-arms was equally miraculous. When Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945, Kurt Meyer was sent to Buchenwald where, soon after, he contracted typhus. Some weeks later, thinking that he was already dead, the guards tossed him onto a heap of corpses. He lay there for days before an old friend from Carlsbad found him and saw that he was still breathing. It was 11 April 1945—the day the Allies liberated Buchenwald.

  The Mysterious: Op. 10 No. 7 in C major

  “There are times when this study seems like light dripping through the trees of a mysterious forest … Were ever Beauty and Duty so mated in double harness?” was the American music critic James Huneker’s enthusiastic response to the Seventh Étude in C major.28 But its lightness and grace can only be truly conveyed when the pianist has both a voracious appetite for the piece and great technical accomplishment.

  Both were true of the young violin player Thomas Mandl, who arrived in the Theresienstadt ghetto when he was sixteen. He was one of the youngest members of the Free Time Organization and played in the orchestra. He liked Alice and her radiance impressed him. “She was a breath of fresh air and joy in Theresienstadt…”29 She had none of that “depressed mood of the normal, so-called ghetto-inmate.”30 As Mandl often helped on the door, he was rewarded with the chance to hear the concert.

  Thomas Mandl’s fate was tragically similar to that of Leopold Sommer. Both were shipped off to Auschwitz, both survived the selection on the ramp, and both were later transported to Dachau. Mandl’s description of his journey from Auschwitz to Dachau is a vivid evocation of what he and his fellow prisoners suffered during it: “One day in Auschwitz we were driven out of our huts and had to assemble in a particular place … Then we were examined in an extraordinary way by SS doctors and put into a railway car … We were forced into cattle trucks and then the train set off. We were in the trucks for days. Where I was in the truck there was a fellow prisoner who tried to commit suicide in a grotesque way.”31

  In each of these cattle trucks there was an iron stove watched over by an SS guard. “The man sat his naked bottom onto the red-hot stove. The SS man was so shocked that when the train stopped he went out and fetched us water to drink. Then he told us: ‘I was in a fighting unit of the SS and then I was wounded. As a reward I was sent here to Auschwitz, but the job is so horrible that I have asked to return to the front of my own accord. Here in Auschwitz living children are being burned in the crematorium.’”32

  The Sparkler: Op. 10 No. 8 in F major

  The Eighth Étude in F major is classic Chopin—gay, colorful, sublime. With the exception of one single bar the melodic structure is played entirely in the left hand. The melody is not only joyful, but has a heroic character, while the strong rhythm makes it almost march-like. The terseness of the melody is amazing: “over and over again it seems to be forced into the same rhythmic forms, each offering more and more glimpses of harmony.”33

  One critic has described the Eighth Étude as being like a “wondrous poet standing in fantastically colored sparkling rain. In the reprise the listener is surprised by new developments in the melody in the left hand as well as by harmonic changes which introduce a peaceful mood and bring on a tender smile. In the next moment this is swept away by humorous figures and joyful passages in the coda.”34 The unbounded vitality, the insuperable power and eagerness so typical of this piece, were also true of Alice’s personality.

  The Demonic: Op. 10 No. 9 in F minor

  Nervous agitation, suppressed passion and a demonic drama mark the mood of the ninth study in F minor. “The melody is morbid, almost irritating, and yet not without certain accents of grandeur. There is a persistency in repetition that foreshadows the Chopin of the later, sadder years.”35

  The musicians incarcerated in Theresienstadt knew all about suppressed passion, but after the first secret performance of an orchestral work on 16 September 1942 this passion found an outlet. It took great daring and a measure of moral courage that is hard to imagine today. The concert was given in the prayer room of the Magdeburg Barracks at a time when public performances were still strictly forbidden. It consisted of Carlo Taube’s Theresienstadt Symphony based on his experiences of the ghetto.36 The little room was completely full. There was a string orchestra on the podium and as there were no brass or woodwind instruments, they substituted an accordion. The first two movements were dominated by Jewish and Slavic themes. The third movement particularly stirred the listeners: the composer’s wife Erika sang a song the lyrics of which she had written herself, a lullaby for a Jewish child “Ein jüdisches Kind,” the only part of the symphony which has survived.

  In the intense finale the first four bars of “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” were repeated over and over again. With each repetition, the anthem became angrier and more violent in the hands of the musicians until “Deutschland, Deutschland” was no longer followed by “über alles” but petered out in a horrible dissonance. Everybody knew what was meant, and a thunderous ovation greeted Carlo and Erika Taube at the end.37

  That same kind of ritualistic repetition, in which the tension in the music mounts until you want to cry out, is also characteristic of the Ninth Étude. The message becomes ever more painful and pessimistic; then comes a dramatic explosion that dies down in the soft, delicate figures in both hands. Everything is peaceful and quiet again, like the rushing of a stream.

  The Melodic: Op. 10 No. 10 in A flat major

  The pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow used to say “that anyone who is able to play the tenth study in A flat in a truly accomplished way can congratulate themselves that they have reached the pianists’ Parnassus.”38 Both hands have to perform enormous technical feats, but even more difficult is the necessity of coordinating the opposing rhythms and shifting accents.

  The physician and musician Dr. Kurt Singer faced an equally difficult task when he became the driving force behind the Jewish Cultural Union in 1933. The Union was established to maintain Jewish cultural life in Germany in the face of the increasing threat from National Socialism. Singer was among those responsible for four Jewish theater companies, four symphony orchestras, several choirs and two opera companies at a time when Jewish musicians were being dismissed from musical ensembles elsewhere. Singer led over 70,000 members of the Cultural Union for five years, before handing the reins over to a new pair of hands. In 1943 this distinguished man was deported to Theresienstadt. A
ll his musical colleagues prized and respected Singer for his towering achievements as a former director of the Berlin Opera, as the leader of the Cultural Union and as a gifted choirmaster and music critic.39

  Singer played an important role in the musical life of the camp. He attended many of Alice’s concerts and they developed a close friendship. Alice valued Singer’s critical analysis, and she felt particular empathy and pity for the eminent musician, who seemed lonely and lost. Soon after his arrival, he found himself in conflict with his colleague and friend Rafael Schächter as Schächter had decided that he wanted to stage Verdi’s Requiem in the ghetto.40

  Singer thought it inappropriate that in a place like Theresienstadt Jewish artists should perform a Christian-Catholic work, rather than an oratorio inspired by the Old Testament. The library had copies of oratorios with Jewish themes, such as Handel’s Solomon, Israel in Egypt or Judas Maccabaeus. Schächter, on the other hand, saw Verdi’s Requiem as a testament to human ideals. His enthusiasm knew no bounds, and soon everything else had to play second fiddle to his performance. In the end, even Singer began to smile:

  The performance was certainly the greatest artistic event conceived or offered in Theresienstadt to date and an achievement in its punctilious preparation. It was an artistic event for certain, but sadly a long way from the concerns of the Jews as long as they were locked up in Theresienstadt … It was a magisterial achievement for Rafael Schächter, who studied the work over the course of the year to the degree that the choir sang without scores; and they sang cleanly, with rhythm and dynamism, heeding every gesture they received from the conductor Schächter. The love that the conductor carried in his heart for the work was clearly transmitted to every one of these fresh girls and young lads … It was a triumphant success … As a former choirmaster I was pleased to be able to say such things in public and with no envy.41

  Not long after, Singer became extremely ill. Käthe Starke, an actress who worked as one of the camp’s peripatetic cleaners, came across him in House Q 410. Quietly and unemotionally he was reciting Faust, complaining to the setting sun:

  That nothing seeks to lift me from this earth,

  And make me strive and strive to find her!

  I’d see the eternal twilight

  The silent world ’neath the ether,

  Inflame the hillsides and put every dale at peace,

  While the silver stream mixes gold with water.

  (Part 1 1075–9)

  A few days later he was bought to the sickbay, dying. Alice visited him there many times and thanked him for all he had done. She was holding his hands when he died.

  The Dreamer: Op. 10 No. 11 in E flat major

  The delicate arabesques in the eleventh E flat Étude are like soulful strummings of the guitar: gliding, airy and trembling. This study is actually a nocturne, which begins in a happy mood but is very soon wrapped in a veil of melancholy grace; and the dreamy melody is transformed into pain and accusation.

  Chopin’s contemporaries were shocked by this piece, because it is based on a provocative and novel idea: the single notes of the chord are temporarily transposed and played as so-called arpeggios. Each of the highest notes in the chord was played louder to matchless effect, described in James Huneker’s 1921 critique of the Études as “this exquisite flight into the blue.” Huneker continued, “this nocturne which should be played before sundown, excited the astonishment of Mendelssohn, the perplexed wrath of Moscheles and the contempt of Rellstab, editor of the Iris, who wrote in that journal in 1834 of the studies in Op. 10, ‘Those who have distorted fingers may put them right by practicing these studies; but those who have not, should not play them, at least not without having a surgeon at hand.’”

  Outraged by Rellstab’s mockery, Huneker stoutly defended Chopin. “What surgical wizardry might have been required to hammer into the skull of this narrow-minded critic an inkling of the beauty of this composition. In future years the Chopin Études will be played for their music without reflection on the technical problems they exhibit.”42

  As she sat rapt and spellbound listening to Alice, fifteen-year-old Zuzana Rûžičková certainly had no idea of the extraordinary technical difficulties Alice had to overcome. To Zuzana, who had been deported to Theresienstadt with her parents in January 1942, the Étude seemed strikingly to embody her own life. She had had a wonderful childhood in Pilsen, growing up with her twin sister and a cousin of her own age.

  Zuzana had begun learning the piano at eight. It was soon clear that she had great talent and it was decided that at the end of her schooling she would go to Paris to study with the famous harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. But after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia no Jewish child could continue at school or take piano lessons. The eleven-year-old’s dream of Paris and a career in music had been shattered.

  Her piano teacher Marie Pravazniková was kind enough to give her secret piano lessons despite the ban, even though she risked putting herself in danger. When she visited, young Zuzana hid her yellow Star of David in her pocket.43 Just before her deportation Zuzana secretly visited her beloved piano teacher Marie Pravazniková for the last time and played the Dvořák Serenade in A major duet with her.

  In the Theresienstadt ghetto Zuzana sang in the legendary performance of Smetana’s Bartered Bride. She heard the pianists Gideon Klein, Bernard Kaff and later Alice, too, and her desire never to abandon her musical vocation was strengthened by their inspiring concerts.

  At the time the Sarabande from Johann Sebastian Bach’s French Suite in E major was her favorite piece of music; so much so that she copied down the score on a slip of paper and carried it with her wherever she went. It probably saved her mother’s life. In December 1943 they were sent to Auschwitz: “Zuzana’s wagon was already full and her mother was pushed into another. Zuzana tried frantically to hang on to the sheet music at the very least, but with the wind, the pushing and the shoving it was blown out of her hand. Her mother ran after the paper, as she knew how important it was for Zuzana. When she came to hand the score back to Zuzana someone pulled her into the truck.”44

  They were spared the gas chambers and when the Germans desperately needed labor after the bombing of Hamburg, they quickly sent 1,500 Jewish women to Hamburg-Neuengamme. Zuzanna and her mother were among them. Without protection from the cold and working with their bare hands, the women had to clear the streets of rubble, repair damaged pipelines and fill in ditches. In February 1945 Hamburg-Neuengamme was “evacuated” and the death march to Bergen-Belsen began.

  When British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945, Zuzana and her mother were among the 56,000 starving, thirsty people living in unimaginable squalor in the throes of death.

  After they returned to Pilsen in August 1945, Zuzana, now eighteen, immediately went to visit her piano teacher. The joy at their meeting was tremendous, but when the old lady saw Zuzana’s worn-out, virtually crippled hands she burst into tears. However, Zuzana refused to accept her fate. She managed to acquire a piano from the national collection and started again at the beginning, note by note. With a supreme effort of will she began her finger exercises once more, practicing for up to twelve hours a day. Her diligence and strength of will bore fruit. She began to study in Prague and she won first prize at the ARD Music Competition in 1956 and became an internationally renowned harpsichordist. To her lasting pride, she made a recording of Bach’s complete harpsichord works, including—of course—the Sarabande from the French Suite in E major.

  The Revolutionary Study: Op. 10 No. 12 in C minor

  The twelfth study in C minor, famously dubbed the “Revolutionary Study,” is like a musical hurricane. Like the best of Chopin’s works, it evokes despair, pain and anger. From the first shrill dissonances to the last rousing chord it fascinates the listener by its sheer scope, its emotional power and breathtaking speed. It could almost be the musical biography of Leo Baeck, the undisputed moral authority in Theresienstadt.

  Baeck had been the last publ
ic representative of the Jewish community in Germany, and the spiritual leader of the German Jews during the Nazi period. Decent, humane and utterly fearless, Baeck was seventy when he was deported to Theresienstadt. Born in 1873, he had studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau (Wrocław) and the Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin and was ordained in 1897.

  In 1905 he published a response to the Protestant theologian Adolf von Harnack’s The Essence of Christianity published five years previously. The Essence of Judaism brought Baeck international recognition. He served as a chaplain in the German army during the First World War, but after the Nazis seized power in 1933 he became President of the Reichsvertretung, which represented Jewish interests at national level. He arrived in Theresienstadt on 28 January 1943 on transport 1/87 receiving the number 187 984. He soon reached the conclusion that he could “not be a simple number,” and that one should “always maintain respect for your self.”45 In Theresienstadt he was elected honorary president of the Council of Elders and with his sermons, speeches and lectures he was able to support and encourage his fellow prisoners, strengthening their resolve to survive.

  In August 1943, a year before the Études Concert, the engineer Grünberg, a friend, went to see him during the night. It was only after the war that Baeck revealed the secret Grünberg told him:

  I was woken by my best friend during the night. I had not seen him for a long time. I had no idea he had been sent to Theresienstadt, and for that reason I asked him how he had got there. He told me to stop talking and to listen carefully. He had something to tell me, something I had to know. First, however, I had to promise to tell no one. He [Grünberg] is a half-Jew and was shipped off to the east. He was sent to the big camp at Auschwitz. Like everyone else he was subjected to selection and it was decided he would be sent off to do slave labor. The others were sent away to be gassed. He knew that for a fact; everyone in Auschwitz knew it. He was sent to a work-camp, from which he escaped and made his way to Prague. I asked him how he had got in to Theresienstadt? He told me that he had bribed a Czech gendarme outside … I had to battle with myself whether I should insist that it was my duty to convince Grünberg to appear before the Council of Elders, of which I was an honorary member, and repeat what he had heard. In the end I decided that no one should know. If I told the Council of Elders, within minutes the story would be around the entire camp. To live in the expectation of death by gas would make life only more difficult; and there was no certainty of this death. There was also the chance that you would be selected as a slave and perhaps not all the transports ended up in Auschwitz. So I came to the difficult conclusion to say nothing to anyone about it. Rumors of all sorts were constantly circulating around the ghetto, and recently there had also been stories about Auschwitz; but at least no one knew anything for sure.46