This Wednesday, January 27, we commemorate the international day dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. On the same date, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated in 1945 ...

Elizabeth Sombart plays Beethoven at Auschwitz

Elizabeth Sombart plays Beethoven at Auschwitz "Being in the shadows, a light" - a film shot at the Auschwitz camp.

Text by: Carmen Lunsmann

4 min

This Wednesday, January 27, we commemorate the international day dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

On the same date, in 1945, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated, one of the Nazis' deadliest with more than a million victims, most of them Jewish.

Among the 7,000 survivors: a 10-year-old boy who was part of a choir inside the camp.

French pianist Elizabeth Sombart tells her story through a film shot in the heart of this extermination camp where she plays Beethoven on the deportees' reception platform.

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Bringing music where you don't expect it has been the mission of pianist Elizabeth Sombart for more than 20 years.

Hospitals, prisons, orphanages, refugee camps, the French Beethoven specialist has given more than 3,000 concerts in places of suffering, but never before in a former concentration camp.

“

I was extremely shocked at a young age to learn that in the first Nazi laws in 1933, Beethoven's music was prohibited to all Jewish musicians.
They were not allowed to play music by an Aryan composer.

Otto Dov Kulka, the miracle of the Auschwitz children's choir

In Auschwitz, a choirmaster defied the prohibitions by having children rehearse - in secret in the latrines -

Beethoven's

Ode to Joy

: "

It was a protest and a resistance of the spirit in the face of crimes and mass violence,

explains Elizabeth Sombart.

A magnificent manifestation of the universal values which can survive even the most inhumane acts ever accomplished by the hand of man.
Otto Dov Kulka, who now lives in Jerusalem, was then 10 years old, now 87. He did not know that this choirmaster made them sing Beethoven.
He didn't know it was the Ode to Joy until years later.
And he said: Beethoven saved my life.

Otto Dov Kulka is a miracle.

The only survivor of 285 children, who arrived at Auschwitz in the fall of 1943 and murdered in the gas chambers six months later.

They were all part of a children's choir that served as a cultural showcase in the largest concentration and extermination camp in the Third Reich.

The repertoire was imposed: catchy folk tunes to entertain guards, officers and international delegations of the Red Cross.

The strength of Beethoven, music in the face of barbarism

“

We also have other absolutely stunning testimonies.
This is the only camp where there was, for example, a women's orchestra led by Gustav Mahler's niece who hand-transcribed Beethoven's 5th Symphony.
Whatever the laws, the prohibitions, there is something in the strength of Beethoven's music, of which Victor Hugo said

: "

This great deaf heard the infinite

".

"

Being in the shadows, a light

, in this film shot inside the Auschwitz camp, Elizabeth Sombart reconnects with Beethoven's humanism, to give music its true place in the face of barbarism.

“

Many people say that Auschwitz is an open-air cemetery, a place of silence.
In reality, what I felt was a perpetual cry.
Something that has no more words and maybe the music can describe.

"

"Being in the Shadows, a Light" - a film shot in the Auschwitz camp.

►

Being in the Shadows, a Light
- a film shot in the Auschwitz camp.

French pianist Elizabeth Sombart has just recorded Beethoven's six piano concertos, a first, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, engraved on three albums released by Signum Classics last December on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the German composer.

Elizabeth Sombart plays Beethoven at Auschwitz

Elizabeth Sombart plays Beethoven at Auschwitz

Otto Dov Kulka, the miracle of the Auschwitz children's choir

The strength of Beethoven, music in the face of barbarism

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