Reflections on the Terezin Experience

Matthew Levinger, Associate Professor of History

Lewis & Clark College

and

Murry Sidlin, Resident Conductor, Oregon Symphony

Thursday, April 18, 7:30 p.m., Agnes Flanagan Chapel

Free and open to the general public

This presentation and panel is part of a week-long series of events sponsored by Pacific University and the Oregon Symphony entitled The Art of Resistance: A Conference which culminates in the Oregon Symphony performance of Murry Sidlin's Defiant Requiem on Saturday, April 20, 8 p.m, Portland Expo Center. Verdi's great Requiem mass will be performed in a moving, dramatic rendition recreating its performance in 1943 at the Terezin Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia.

This session will include background information about Terezin (Theresienstadt), the Nazi "show camp" near Prague, and the community of about 400 scholars who were imprisoned there for more than three years. In 1943 and 1944, prisoner/conductor Rafael Schächter organized a choir of 150 fellow Jewish prisoners, taught them the Verdi Requiem by rote, and presented 16 performances of this musical monument as an act of defiance and resistance against Nazi oppression, and as an act of hope and comfort for the thousands of prisoners who attended the performances.

Murry Sidlin, Resident Conductor, Oregon Symphony, will provide an introduction to Defiant Requiem followed by reflections from panelists about what this experience of a unique group of scholars means to us today.

Defiant Requiem image courtesy of Anton Kimball.