Members of the Arcadia Chorale, directed by Matthew Rupcich, will sing ‘Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps” during a concert that begins at 7:30 p.m. April 18 at the Friedman JCC in Kingston.
Submitted photo
Public invited to hear Holocaust Cantata
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If you listen to the “Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps,” which the Arcadia Chorale will sing on Tuesday at the Friedman Jewish Community Center in Kingston, you will hear haunting words written by people who were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.
You’ll hear about birch trees at Buchenwald that “rustle sadly.”
And a “shell of a man” who wakes up to “coffee only … nothing more, because today’s bread ate he yesterday.”
And a gut-wrenching observation that “the sprays kill and the flames rise and the children go up in smoke.”
“The lyrics are quite stirring and quite poignant,” Arcadia Chorale director Matt Rupcich said, admitting that “sometimes we have to take a moment during the rehearsal process” to collect ourselves.
“Not only the singers but the audience will be very moved by the music and the words,” JCC chief executive officer Gary Bernstein predicted. “It is very emotional.”
The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 18, which in the United States is designated as Yom HaShoah, a Day of Remembrance to honor the lives of 6 million Jews brutally murdered in Europe between 1933 and 1945.
The youngest survivors of the Holocaust are now in their late 70s and each passing year brings fewer chances to speak to them directly and hear their stories.
But one way their experience lives on is through this music, composed by Donald McCullough, who used material from the Aleksander Kulisiewicz Collection of poetry and other passages created by prisoners.
The writings originally were in the Polish language, and were translated by Denny Clark. The cantata had its musical premier in 1998 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, with McCullough directing the Master Chorale of Washington.
“What I think is remarkable,” Rupcich said, “here are individuals in the camps who wrote these lyrics. It shows their resilience, to tell their story so we would not forget.”
“Never forget” is a phrase often associated with the Holocaust, and Bernstein was impressed when U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, in a 2021 speech, described how people who were condemned to die at the Auschwitz concentration camp used their final moments to send that message.
“With three minutes to live, locked in a gas chamber,” Bernstein quoted Blinken, “they found enough strength to dig their fingernails into the walls and scratch in the words ‘never forget.’ “
In a speech at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., Blinken mentioned that his own stepfather, Samuel Pisar, saw those words on the wall when he was a teen-age prisoner at Auschwitz.
For the Day of Remembrance, Bernstein said, “We usually have a vigil with special prayers read and a candle lit. This (the cantata) is a change for us.”
He’s hoping many people will attend the concert — to listen and learn, perhaps cry a little, and resolve that such atrocities will never happen again.
Performing with the Arcadia Chorale will be baritone soloist Erik Tofte, cellist Gayle Klaber and pianist Tsukasa Mizuguchi Waltich.
Admission to the concert is free, but reservations are requested. Please call the JCC at 570-824-4646.
The performance is sponsored by the Arcadia Chorale, Friedman JCC, Israel Engagement Fund, Temple Israel and the Wyoming Valley Interfaith Council.