Remembering the Holocaust: Defiant Requiem

ORCHESTRA TUNES UP

APPLAUSE Ssh!

MUSIC STARTS

WOMAN SINGS

In the Spring of 1944,

the Nazis attend an unusual performance of Verdi's Requiem.

The choir and their conductor

are all prisoners in the concentration camp Terezin.

The inmates of Terezin channel the darkest of human experience

into an explosion of art and music,

and they would use it to defy the Nazis.

Doing a performance was not entertainment.

It was a fight for life.

It was something which made us strong.

It is the reason why we are calling it cultural resistance.

It has given us a resistance against our fate.

We just tried to reach something that's bigger than we are.

And let's hope that we are singing to God,

and God can't help but hear us.

Now, a new choir brings the Requiem back to Terezin...

..and the story of this artistic uprising to life.

Here they were, surrounded on an hourly basis by man's worst,

and these Jewish prisoners and the creative people here

were determined to remind everyone of man's best.

And I brought the Verdi here

because I want to assure these people that I've heard them.

Now we have to tell the people of the unmarked graves...

that we've heard them.

SINGING

LOW CHATTER

In a small town in the Czech Republic,

a warehouse is being prepared for a reawakening.

Tomorrow, an American conductor will stage a special performance,

a tribute to a prison chorus and to another conductor,

Rafael Schachter, who led them in an extraordinary rebellion.

This is the first time that the story of Schachter

and his chorus and its connection to the ghetto concentration camp

of Terezin has come home to the place where it was born.

It belongs here.

On this very ground, these people walked and they lived as prisoners.

Within these walls,

a camp of Jewish prisoners stood eye to eye with their Nazi captors

and fought back with music,

performing one of the world's most difficult choral compositions,

Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem Mass.

For over ten years, conductor Murry Sidlin has dreamed

of bringing his own chorus here...

Thank you so much.

..to re-ignite their spirit.

Ever since I learned what happened here,

and the extraordinary artistic statement

that Schachter and his chorus decided they were going to make,

I thought that it would be the right thing

to honour not only him but all those who sang and all those who listened,

and to reawaken all these walls with the sounds of the Verdi,

which have not been heard here for a long, long time.

Thank you. You can go ahead now, please.

OK, we need the F now. Here we go.

SHE SINGS

The story of this Defiant Requiem

begins as Jewish life in Czechoslovakia comes to an end.

Prague, 1941.

Musician Rafael Schachter is preparing for a journey.

Where he is going...he has no idea.

Hitler's Nazi empire has swallowed up the city,

one of Europe's most vibrant cultural capitals.

The Nazis crush the city's creative community,

and Schachter and his fellow Jewish artists find themselves shut out,

branded as outsiders.

It started that we had to wear the star.

If you were found without it, you would be punished by being deported.

My father was kicked out of his office

within days of the German invasion,

without pension or any compensation to support his family,

and all financial assets were frozen. Inaccessible to Jews.

At 29 years old, Rafael Schachter has established himself in Prague

as a talented pianist and conductor.

But under the Nazis, Jews are banned from the arts,

ejected from schools, and confined to their homes by an evening curfew.

Robbed of his art and his income,

Schachter struggles to make a living as a piano teacher.

He was my music teacher since I was about eight years old.

Well, he was supposed to teach me to play piano.

He couldn't make me a musician,

but he introduced me to the world of music.

The city's famed theatres and concert halls fall silent.

And in November of 1941,

the Nazis lower the curtain on Jewish life in Prague.

You started filtering news that they are making lists of Jewish families

and they'd be sent somewhere.

There was my mother, my brother, sister and myself.

And we all got a transport number.

S-204, 205,

206 and me, 716.

And I thought that was like a hand of fate touched me.

That's bad news.

The Nazis force all Jewish families to pack up their lives,

and limit them to 50kg of luggage.

110 lb selected from a lifetime.

Rafael Schachter takes the things that give his life meaning -

the tools of his trade, piano scores,

including Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem Mass.

At 5am on a November morning,

Schachter and hundreds of Czech Jews

board the first train into the unknown.

board the first train into the unknown.

When we came to the station,

we have been surrounded by the SS with rifles

and from that moment, we have been the prisoners.

We came to the station and there were already a lot of people

and old ones and children crying, and pushed into a train.

And off we went. Had no idea where we were going.

The train carries them just 40 miles west of Prague

to an old garrison town

transformed into a new Jewish prison camp, Theresienstadt.

Terezin.

The town is selected by the man charged with rounding up

Europe's Jews, Nazi Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann.

With only a half square mile in area

and confined by a high wall,

the old fortress would serve as

a ready-made holding pen for the Czech Jews.

Even the town's 18th-century foundation is eerily prophetic,

built in the shape of a six-pointed star.

Thousands of families are herded into the new Jewish ghetto.

The train stopped at a small place called Bolshevize,

and from there we walked endless, endless, endless

country roads, two by two, with all our luggage.

The railroad station was two miles away.

We had to carry the allowed 110 lb of luggage...

..and we walked the two miles to enter through one of the gates

into the total unknown.

We were ordered, "Raus," "fast, fast,"

because the Germans always had us to do everything on the double.

And no matter how fast we did it, it was never fast enough.

And when we all went through the gates

I knew that life will never be the same.

The Nazi guards strip all new arrivals of cash and valuables

and any semblance of normal life.

Children are seized from their parents,

husbands and wives separated into bunks for men and women.

The dusty barracks of the fortress are soon

stuffed from the floors to the attics with Jewish prisoners.

Rafael Schachter carves out a space for himself

in the rafters of an old house.

Everything was organised.

There was organisation for every part of life in Terezin -

how to build the three-storey bunks,

your living space was measured out exactly 1.6 metres.

At first, we lived in a huge hall,

where there were, I think, about 400 people in one room.

My mother was in a different barracks and so was my sister,

so we could not visit them.

For several weeks, my mother and I had no idea where my father was,

and he had no idea where we were.

The day after his arrival, Rafael Schachter is assigned to

a construction detail...

..forced to work up to 100 hours a week.

Other inmates work in factories, sewing uniforms for German soldiers.

Jewish artists are drafted to produce Nazi propaganda.

But at night, with stolen supplies,

they risk their lives to secretly record the horrors around them.

The moment you open your eyes, the struggle began.

Of course, the struggle for the day-by-day trivial needs -

wash yourself, reach the latrines.

We had been converted from regular people to inmates.

The German slogan at the camp is "work will make you free"...

..but refusal to work means a brutal incarceration

in the nearby small fortress,

where inmates are tortured and executed.

For everyone else in Terezin,

the constant hunger is a torture all of its own.

Of course there was no food.

There wasn't more than maybe a cupful, like this,

and some of it was just some kind of watery bits, or whatever,

but the food that we swallowed, it was never quite enough.

Who of us worked in the kitchen, we could have a little bit more food

than just one potato and one ladle of soup,

but I remember when we were giving it out,

the old people were standing in the line for hours

and if it was soup, they came with the little dish,

and would say, "Please, from the bottom,"

so that there will be something - a piece of potato maybe

or a string of something -

so for them, it was real suffering.

Surrounded by misery, Rafael Schachter realises

that what will set them free isn't work, but music.

He discovers an old piano in a barracks basement

and resolves to take a risk of his own.

His first recruit is a 21-year-old camp cook

who shares his attic living space, Edgar Krasa.

He assessed immediately that a prison mentality may sink in,

so he encouraged us,

after the assigned work was done,

to come to the basement and sing,

starting out with Czech popular songs.

At night, after long days at work,

Schachter begins holding secret musical gatherings.

THEY SING

He taps deep into Czech pride, rallying his fellow inmates

with a performance of Smetana's comic opera, The Bartered Bride.

You forget where you are, you forget the surroundings.

It was like as if I was in a concert hall in Prague,

and it didn't matter where it was.

This hour-and-a-half or so shortened the time we had for brooding

about our new lifestyle, and it did more.

The next day at work, we already occupied our mind

looking forward to the evening to sing again.

THEY SING

To carry these songs which we all knew,

you carried it with you in your mind

and it was a part of the mechanism to help you to cope.

THEY SING

Rafael Schachter has opened a refuge for his fellow inmates

with music.

They have no idea how important it will become.

THEY SING

THUNDER RUMBLES

OK. Let's get settled, please, so we can begin. Ssh.

Also, be up when the piano plays.

OK? We talked about that. Thank you.

Good. OK. Let's begin from the beginning, please.

TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

Can we have the train whistle a little louder

and a little sooner, please?

'We all have a powerful emotional storehouse,

'We all have a powerful emotional storehouse,

'and we don't necessarily have the language

'to get at the power of our feelings.

'When common language can no longer get even close'

'When common language can no longer get even close'

to what it is we're feeling, that's when art begins.

THEY SING

Inside the walls of Terezin, Schachter and his fellow inmates

unleash a flood of artistic creation.

THEY SING

Musicians stage concerts of imprisoned Jewish composers

Viktor Ullmann and Gideon Klein.

Pavel Haas and Hans Kraza write all-new musical compositions.

Playwrights mount new productions,

creating sets and costumes with whatever materials they can find.

Terezin erupts into a thriving cultural centre,

an academy of prisoners.

an academy of prisoners.

The arrival of those artists who were willing to devote their talent

to their and the inmates' benefit made all the difference.

To give us that flicker of hope

in the hopeless black monotony of the camp day after day.

All we lived with from the start in Terezin

was the notion that in another two months, the war will be over,

they close this gate and we go home.

So, in the meantime,

of course there was such a surge of energy for the arts,

which is quite normal.

If people are robbed of freedom, they want to be creative.

And they were.

RIPPLE OF APPLAUSE

RIPPLE OF APPLAUSE

The artists of Terezin strive to find humour through satire

of life under the Nazis...

..sometimes dangerously pushing the limit.

One play, The Last Cyclist,

mocks the tyranny of the Third Reich,

depicting an evil society bent on killing not Jews,

but people who ride bicycles.

Well, there was the Jewish management

who always came to the dress rehearsal,

and they came to see The Last Cyclist

and they said, "Uh-uh, no way, we can't have that.

"Sorry, that will be so much trouble.

"We don't want to create any more trouble than we have.

"No, it will not be performed."

The inmates of Terezin push through ceaseless hunger

to feed a deeper artistic longing.

For spiritual needs, they turn to their faith.

Rabbis interned at the camp

transform a hidden room into a secret synagogue.

The rabbis were happy.

Oh, they never had so many people come voluntarily to their sermon.

Everybody wanted to go, because it reminded you

of your life at home, when you were attending concerts

and other cultural activities,

and it took time away from thinking about your current life.

Scholars from every discipline give lectures to packed audiences

about science, religion, psychology.

In a sense, it was like going to college.

I mean, I was that age, basically. As I came here, I was 18.

And we went to art history lectures,

I remember going to physics lectures.

These were all experiences I didn't have before, so...

You can't call it normalcy but it was something very different.

There were announcements, there were programmes,

so every night, you could actually be part of that life.

The artistic life in Terezin.

Throughout German-occupied Europe, Jews are herded into ghettos,

forbidden to gather, play musical instruments

or venture out at night.

But inside the walls of Terezin,

the inmates find a strange artistic freedom.

MUSIC PLAYED ON PIANO

The Germans knew full well that we are destined for death,

and the smile will be wiped off our faces,

so they thought, "Let them play music, let them play theatre,

"let them dance."

So we were dancing under the gallows.

SHE SINGS

Trains arrive every few days,

delivering thousands of new inmates to the overcrowded ghetto.

In the small fortress,

Jews and political prisoners are brutally beaten,

tortured to death or executed.

600 inmates are crammed into a single room

600 inmates are crammed into a single room

with two toilets, little food and the relentless spread of disease.

Every other or third day, another thousand arrived.

They came - whole families.

To live in crowded conditions like that,

it's very hard.

There were fleas all the time, there were fleas and bedbugs,

and we were hungry all the time, of course. There was never enough food.

By September 1942, the town built for 6,000 people

is bursting with nearly 60,000 Jewish inmates

from as far away as the Netherlands and Denmark.

In Germany, the Nazis sell retirement packages to elderly Jews,

promising posh suites at a lakeside resort

before putting them on the trains to Terezin.

They came from Germany under the notion

that they are going to a spa.

That they would be looked after, they will live in a hotel.

They brought in suitcases with evening dresses

and long gloves, and hats with feathers, and all that,

and of course these people were dying 200 a day.

SHE SINGS

Typhus ravages the crowded ghetto.

Typhus ravages the crowded ghetto.

In a single year, nearly half the population will die.

Bodies pile up in such numbers

the Nazis order the prisoners to build a crematorium,

where, against Jewish religious law,

they're forced to incinerate their dead.

Old people were dying like flies.

And you saw the transports of corpses all the time.

Death was a concept which we learned to live with.

Death was omnipresent, it was everywhere.

SHE SINGS

By September 1942,

Hitler's Final Solution is killing Jews by the millions.

Across eastern Europe, whole towns - men, women and children -

are herded into fields and massacred with machine guns.

In German-occupied Poland,

the extermination camp Auschwitz is killing so many people

they order the construction of two more gas chambers

and 46 additional ovens.

The inmates of Terezin have no idea of the horrors

outside their town's walls.

But in January 1943,

a new fear grips the ghetto - transports to the east.

It was like a Damocles' sword hanging over us.

It was the only fear.

Transport to the east was the word.

Nobody knew where to and when,

and nobody knew when his turn will come.

The strange thing is that we did not know where the transports went.

The word "Auschwitz", we didn't know, we didn't hear. That was unknown.

In a sadistic twist, choosing whose names are on the list

is delegated by the Nazis to the camp's Jewish leaders,

the Council of Elders.

It was a lousy responsibility

for the officials of the Jewish community

that they had to pick people they didn't know,

just put together 1,000 people and ship them out.

They probably must have known where these transports went,

but it was their life on the line.

And it never filtered through.

Never.

TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

Before long, so many trains are leaving Terezin

the Nazis order the inmates to lay tracks right into the ghetto,

building their own railroad to the abyss.

For six days, 1,000 names a day are drawn from a terrible lottery...

..inmates loaded into cattle cars and sent east

to a fate no-one dares to imagine.

We didn't know that there are extermination camps.

That there are camps which are much, much worse than Terezin was.

But nevertheless, we have felt something unknown,

and in our situation, being the prisoners,

to know something unknown, that's a dreadful feeling.

As fear falls over the ghetto,

Rafael Schachter turns to one of the few possessions

he brought from Prague -

the score to Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem Mass.

With one of the most powerful choral works in the world,

With one of the most powerful choral works in the world,

he could hone his art into a weapon.

In his mind, he transformed it from the Mass for the dead

into Mass for the dead Nazis.

And he wanted to tell them about the day of wrath coming,

and the supreme judge sitting in judgment, and no sinner will escape.

And he couldn't tell them in German,

so he thought if he can sing it in Latin, he may get away with it.

so he thought if he can sing it in Latin, he may get away with it.

Verdi's Latin text describes wrathful vengeance

and holy judgment.

and holy judgment.

Schachter's plan to use the fiery Catholic Mass

to denounce the Germans provokes outrage across the ghetto.

The Council of Jewish Elders started to get vibrations from rabbis

and Zionists. "Are you kidding?

"Doing Verdi Requiem, a big Catholic work like that?

"You've got to be kidding." So they call in Schachter, and say,

"Are you trying to apologise for being Jewish?

"This is the way it's going to be perceived.

"People are starting to rumble, starting to get noisy.

"And you know how they're going to settle this?

"First thing, they'll shoot you.

"They'll deport the whole chorus.

"And they'll stop, they'll stop all the night-time activity.

"And it'll all be your fault."

A storm he created in the ghetto.

Everybody was really opposed to it

because as a Jew with Jewish singers

in a Jewish ghetto, why would you pick a Catholic Mass

when there are works by Handel on Jewish themes

that cannot be played anywhere in occupied Europe?

This is the place, the only place.

I don't know what he answered them, but he persisted.

WOMAN SINGS

By the time we were allowed to enter

the special group of the people who were chosen for the Verdi Requiem,

we had nothing but gratitude for Rafi in our hearts.

We aimed to please him.

THEY SING

And if anyone would have come in, a few Nazis with a few guns,

and would have said,

"Stop immediately and get out of this building

"or I'll shoot you all,"

there wouldn't have been one that would have left the building.

In the basement of a concentration camp barracks,

Rafael Schachter begins the mission of his life -

piecing together one of the world's most demanding compositions

with an amateur chorus of prisoners learning each note -

in Latin - by rote.

I had never in my life heard a requiem.

I did not have any idea about the gorgeous, gorgeous beautiful music.

I also didn't know more than two Latin words.

And Rafi made very sure that he would exactly translate into Czech

the meaning of the words, and Rafi told us,

"The most important thing is how you feel when you sing this."

From the beginning, Schachter makes it clear

that this Requiem is not just another performance.

It was to be a statement, the biggest - perhaps the last -

they would make together.

It has to be perfect.

He was a very nice guy to be with socially,

but when it came to rehearsals, he was merciless.

You couldn't move, you couldn't turn your head,

you couldn't do anything except have your eyes

directed into his eyes.

It's one of THE most demanding choral works,

demanding not only musically but emotionally,

and there has to be a precision.

There has to be an understanding of the text.

And if you read the text as though you were a prisoner,

then it has a different meaning altogether.

That this is defiance!

And suddenly the Libera Me,

which literally means "Deliver me, oh Lord"

becomes "Liberate me, oh Lord".

The Libera Me was "liberate us from here".

The Libera Me was "liberate us from here".

That was like a prayer that overcame hunger and occasional pains.

You were there in that cellar

and you were a different person.

THEY SING

I'm not so sure whether I was hard of hearing

but I think that my stomach stopped growling when I was singing.

I think when you are more a soul than a person,

I don't think that the soul has to be nourished by

anything but by heavenly music.

The soul doesn't need anything else.

THEY SING

OK, we have plenty of room up here

and there is space back there.

and there is space back there.

Just be careful of this little pool here.

Today, Rafael Schacter's rehearsal space fills up once again

as Murry brings in his chorus before this afternoon's performance.

OK. Let me have your attention. Ssh.

This is, to me, a very religious moment.

After many, many hours per day of slave labour,

these people were compelled to come to this cold, dank, airless place

and rehearse the Verdi Requiem.

But one of the most important things we can do

is to once again sing this music to these walls

which heard it and absorbed it years ago

and have not heard it since.

All of this is to say to not only the survivors

but those who didn't survive,

that they have been heard... and we so honour them.

that they have been heard... and we so honour them.

So let's see if we can sing through this now.

Give us the B flat again, please.

MUSIC: "Libera Me" by Giuseppe Verdi

# Requiem

# Requiem aeternam

# Dona eis

# Dona eis

# Dona eis, Domine

# Dona eis

# Dona eis

# Dona eis

# Dona eis

# Dona eis

# Domine

# Et lux perpetua... #

We're sitting here, in Terezin, right now

in the first week in March and it's freezing...

..and they go into a dark, damp, cold cellar

virtually every night because they want to sing the Verdi Requiem.

Can you imagine?

We can't wait to get out of this place and get warm.

They can't get warm.

# ..Perpetua

# Luceat eis... #

Rafi said, "We will sing this in memory and gratitude to Verdi,

"and you can have, in your heart,

"gratitude to anybody you loved and lost.

"A relative, a friend, whatever you feel when you have the sad part.

"Just make sure it is becoming one of you."

# ..Et lux

# Et lux

# Perpetua

# Luceat eis

# Requiem

# Requiem. #

The first time we came, she didn't know where she was.

No, I know where I am now. That's Hamburger

and that's the gate to the barracks where I lived.

This part of the Hamburger, that was where the railroad ended.

When the transports came in, they were welcomed by the Germans,

who, right away, went through their luggage and confiscated

all the better clothing and shoes to send it to Germany.

BIRDSONG

I don't remember ever hearing birds.

I don't remember ever seeing grass.

It was drab always and muddy and...ugly.

646?

Who has the trumpet solo 646?

Yeah. I didn't hear. I didn't hear.

Play please...

HE HUMS

Verdi, Verdi...

Here we go - 641.

Thank you. And one, two...

# Dona eis requiem

# Dona eis... #

Tenors, gently!

Don't scream that out.

# ..Dona eis requiem... #

Thank you.

# ..Requiem. #

Well, my youngest son,

who's named after Rafi,

came to me and said, "We want to honour our father

"and Rafi Schachter by singing in Terezin."

"and Rafi Schachter by singing in Terezin."

"and Rafi Schachter by singing in Terezin."

And he told his brother

and he wanted it as a surprise for their father.

And I said, "Well, find out if you can before we do anything."

So he called up Murry Sidlin

and talked it over with him

and then, when he found out they can,

he said, "We are going to do it."

They originally wanted to keep it a secret and surprise me

and they told my wife and she...

..all the time worries about me. I don't know why.

I mean, there's nothing to worry,

she worries why there's nothing to worry.

At our age, I didn't want any big surprises.

I don't know, maybe I'm silly.

So once they came over for dinner

and Rafi and Danny brought their score and they showed it to him

and told him at that time, "We are going to sing the Requiem."

HE HUMS

Yeah, that's the other one.

And I haven't heard my father sing it, actually, ever.

One, two, three...

THEY SING: # Lacrimosa dies illa

# Qua resurget ex favilla

# Judicandus homo... #

MUSIC: "Lacrimosa" by Giuseppe Verdi

# Huic ergo parce Deus

# Huic ergo

# Parce Deus

# Lacrimosa dies illa

# Qua resurget ex favilla... #

It's emotional, but I'm very, very happy about it.

And I'm looking forward to the performance

and the beautiful music and we'll be all together, so that's good.

They did not succeed. We survived.

By September 1943,

Schachter's chorus hasn't quite mastered the Requiem...

..but the Council of Elders announces that, on September 5th,

the transports will resume.

Schachter's chorus could soon be ripped apart.

The rehearsals went fast.

In seven weeks...

In seven weeks, it became known

that transports will resume

and now the singers wanted him to make a performance and he didn't

because it wasn't to his standard.

But when it became known that September 6th,

5,000 people will leave,

he couldn't refuse.

Schachter fears his chorus, and he himself,

could be shipped out in days.

So with a chorus of 150 inmates and a single piano,

Schachter leads their first performance of Verdi's Requiem.

# Rex tremendae majestatis

# Qui salvandos salvas gratis

# Salva me, fons pietatis

# Salva me, fons pietatis

# Salva me, fons pietatis. #

It was tremendous and I still don't understand it.

It was tremendous and I still don't understand it.

There was only a piano, but for me, it was like

There was only a piano, but for me, it was like

if the whole orchestra played

and it made us feel human.

These two hours, you were taken back

into the beautiful world which was once your own.

The world of the tunes and of the melody which you are listening

and the message which was given to us by the performers.

# Salva me, fons pietatis... #

These were hours of pure joy.

As much as you can call joy in camp.

This room became the protective walls

of something good,

something meaningful,

something healing

something healing

and something that showed everyone who was really listening

that Rafi had put all of us,

the singers and the audience,

into another world.

This was not the world with the Nazis, this was our world.

# Salva me... #

The first performance is a revelation -

for Schachter, for his singers,

for their fellow inmates in the audience -

the very sound of hope.

the very sound of hope.

They were stunned, totally stunned,

they could not believe what Rafi had done, with these people, us,

standing there without a scrap of paper, without anything

but the entire words and music committed to memory.

For many in the chorus and the audience,

Verdi's Requiem is the last music they would hear.

The next morning, 5,000 inmates are loaded onto the transports.

Rafael Schachter sees more than half of his chorus

carried away in cattle cars.

It was a special transport,

in September 1943.

5,000 Terezin Jews to Auschwitz.

We did not know, thank God - at least I didn't - about Auschwitz.

It was called "resettlement",

and none of us had any idea about gas chambers.

We just figured, it's not very good here,

but at least we know how bad it is,

if we go somewhere else, maybe there is more food, maybe it's better,

if we go somewhere else, maybe there is more food, maybe it's better,

but I'm not going to volunteer for anything.

Over the next six months, Schachter recruits new singers

and rebuilds his chorus.

They'll perform the Requiem for their fellow inmates 15 times,

constantly reinforcing their chorus and their spirits

as fellow singers are torn away by the transports.

Whether they were members of the chorus

or whether these were people who lived in your room in the barracks,

you were sorry for them to have to go

and for you to lose another friend.

But everybody lived with that concern.

That was worse than the hunger and anything else.

The writing on the wall wasn't pretty,

because transports were leaving to the east.

By that time, there was an escapee from Auschwitz,

Siegfried Lederer, who came to Theresienstadt,

was hiding in the basement there.

And he said, "It is guaranteed death."

So those who ever doubted what's in this "east",

you know, heard it from first-hand witness.

Outside Terezin,

the Nazi killing machine now operates six death camps,

a ruthlessly efficient system intent on erasing the Jewish people.

As the Jews of Europe disappear,

the Nazis devise a cynical ruse

to hide the true horrors of the Third Reich

behind the artistic facade of Terezin.

Spring 1944, after two years of living as prisoners,

the inmates of Terezin receive orders

to give their camp a makeover.

Walls and pavements are scrubbed,

gardens planted

and fake storefronts filled with

goods from the inmates' own luggage.

My mother was supposed to make signs with oil paint

that had an arrow and says,

"To the library"...

.."To the coffee house"...

.."To the playground".

She had no idea where this would go.

That was used in Terezin for the commission

to see that we had a coffee house, we had a bank,

we had a playground, we had everything.

The Nazis complete the beautification

by thinning out the crowds.

Nearly 8,000 people - orphans, the elderly, the sick,

anyone who doesn't look the part - are shipped off to die in Auschwitz.

On June 23rd,

the Nazis invite a delegation from the International Red Cross

for a visit to what the Germans call

"a self-governed Jewish city".

The inspection is ordered by Nazi Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann...

The inspection is ordered by Nazi Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann...

..and choreographed down to the last detail.

Nothing, nothing was not planned.

Not a corner was omitted to make it convincing.

WHISTLE

They picked out inmates who knew how to play soccer...

..so they played soccer

and even the commission passed by and a goal was scored.

The scenario was written to perfection.

The Nazis complete the charade by capturing the town's makeover

for a propaganda film.

Theresienstadt - the Fuhrer gives a city to the Jews.

THEY SING

They force a Jewish inmate,

a well-known actor named Kurt Gerron, to direct the film.

A warped vision to the world of Terezin as a Jewish fantasy village.

The highlight of the Red Cross inspection is to be a performance

of the Verdi Requiem.

Their cameras capture the only photo of Schachter

and his diminished choir in rehearsal.

The order came from the camp commander,

he wanted the performance for the Swiss Red Cross people

and those big shots who came from Berlin

to shake their hand for a good report.

The transports have cut Schachter's chorus down to 60 people,

less than half its former size.

But now, they have the opportunity Schachter has dreamed of -

to risk everything and confront the Nazis face to face...

..and sing to them what they dare not say.

He had a great dilemma, Schachter.

He was a stickler for perfection.

He didn't like the composition of the chorus...

..but it was a tremendous challenge,

to have the Germans right there in front of him

and tell them to their face...

If the Germans would have known, what was unfolding,

if they would have known that Rafael was trying to tell them

that they too will be judged one of these days

for their crimes they committed on mankind,

they would have really punished the artists.

Without Rafi, it wouldn't have happened,

and we proved beyond the shadow of any doubt,

that yes, they have our bodies,

yes, we have no more names, we have numbers,

but they don't have our soul, our mind, our being,

our...what we are cannot be taken away,

our...what we are cannot be taken away,

also it won't be taken away at the moment we are shot.

Dies Irae, even as a listener,

you feel is powerful.

It represents a threat...

..that you gladly would participate in

as avenging whatever was done unto you.

There was no applause, but I'm sure the Swiss people were impressed.

And the Germans were aware

that we were singing our own requiem,

because they knew what they had in mind for us, whereas we did not.

Rafael Schachter and his 60 singers

had delivered their message in the face of their captors.

Now they cling to the possibility that the Red Cross will hear it.

We all have one very deep hope.

That some of the people, the Red Cross representatives,

will ask a probing question.

Because it was a beautifully quaint, little town, what they showed them.

So we hoped, really, that they did not swallow it hook, line and sinker.

That they will say, "OK, let's now turn to this side.

"Or let's ask somebody something out of this."

I don't think that any inmate would have dared to say the truth.

But they could have seen it,

had they turned from the outlined route for them.

But they never really did.

I think they wanted to believe what they saw.

I thought, that with what we were singing, that we could say,

"Let me get through, I want to show them something."

To tell them, "Go inside of such a house.

"See these portals? Walk right through any one.

"See these portals? Walk right through any one.

"You would be surprised what you find in there."

But there was no way of doing that.

So they came home to Switzerland

and said the Jews have it very good.

CHILDREN SING

They play funny operas and children's operas...

..and the children play in beautiful swings and rocking horses.

And in the afternoon, they have an afternoon nap in the grass...

..and when they wake up, they each get bread and butter.

These are children who had never SEEN butter, except that day.

Deception is not the right word,

there must be a worse word for that.

If anybody would have come two weeks later, there was nothing left.

Even the children's home was empty,

with the baby carriages.

Small children, aged three to six or eight...

it was empty, there was no child left.

The swings were gone,

the playpens were gone,

the rocking horses were gone and the children were gone.

All into the gas chambers.

What did these children do to anybody?

# Requiem

# Requiem aeternam

# Dona eis

# Domine

# Dona eis

# Dona eis

# Dona eis

# Domine

# Et lux perpetua

# Luceat eis

# Luceat eis

# Requiem aeternam

# Dona eis, Domine

# Et lux

# Perpetua

# Luceat eis

# Requiem

# Requiem. #

TRAIN WHISTLES

The Red Cross performance would be the choir's last.

Not long after the delegation leaves Terezin,

the transports to the east resume.

After the visit of the International Red Cross, everybody was deported.

19,000 in five weeks,

and I knew that my time would come very soon.

On October 15th 1944, the transport is announced.

Almost the entire choir will be sent to the east.

This time, Rafael Schachter's name

is also on the list.

Most of the artists, the painters and the musicians

went with the transport as myself.

Why it was so combined together, nobody knows.

I think they wished to have

the people who had been important in Terezin,

to be out of Terezin and to be killed.

The next morning, Schachter and his choir are packed into cattle cars

and transported to the hell of Auschwitz.

RAIN PATTERS

And so, we were pushed into the cattle trucks

and it was completely full, you could hardly breathe.

People didn't move, they didn't talk very much.

Everybody was thinking, "Where are we going? What's ahead of us?"

So here is Rafael Schachter with a tin of sardines

and he says to me, "Zdenka, here is my dish, here is bread,

"and here are the sardines, and that will be my last supper."

And so, he knew.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz,

most of the chorus and musicians are sent directly to their deaths

and with them, an entire nation's cultural wealth.

I really feel strongly

this was to be the next generation of the great Czech composers,

all wiped out on October 17th 1944.

In one day, in one moment, in a gas chamber in Auschwitz,

that next generation of Czech composers...gone.

We went to Auschwitz with a transport of 1,500 men.

On the ramp of Auschwitz to Birkenau,

which was the extermination camp,

I have seen Rafael Schachter the last time.

Rafael Schachter would survive Auschwitz

and three more concentration camps.

In March 1945,

he dies on a death march.

One month later,

liberation comes to Czechoslovakia.

I think the great lesson of Theresienstadt was, first of all,

to see the highs and lows.

The worst in man and the best.

In music, in acting, in conducting, in composing,

if I ever lived in the most cultured and cultural surrounding,

it was in Terezin, amongst these people.

Remember to the time

what we had been living through,

that somebody wished to help us,

and that was Rafael Schachter and all the singers.

Rafael Schachter had an influence... beneficial influence

on thousands of people who have to thank him

for giving them a bearable memory of Terezin.

I'm not a holocaust survivor as much as, you know, a Requiem survivor.

I didn't only survive the Requiem -

I got it as a present to take with me all my life.