65th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz Camp: European Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and for the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity.

Upon the initiative of the Council of Europe, the European Ministers of Education adopted a declaration in 2002, founding the “Day of the Remembrance of the Holocaust and the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity” in the schools of member states. France and Germany chose January 27th, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz as the day of remembrance.

For the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the “International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust”, the Mémorial de la Shoah has taken the initiative of organizing and coordinating a number of commemorative, educational events throughout France, in partnership with six institutions responsible for places of remembrance related to the persecution, internment, deportation and extermination of the Jews of France.

The participating sites:
• Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris
• Drancy Camp Memorial, Seine–Saint-Denis
• Des Milles Camp Memorial, Bouches-du-Rhône
• Gurs Camp Memorial, Pyrénées-Atlantiques
• Izieu Children’s Home, Ain
• Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande Camp Memorial, Loiret
• Rivesaltes Camp Memorial, Pyrénées-Orientales
• Mémorial de la Shoah in Toulouse, Haute-Garonne
• Memorial for the 86 Auschwitz deportees gasses in Natzweiler-Struthof, Cronenbourg Jewish Cemetery Cronenbourg, Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin

Pre - Program:

Morning: Pupils meet with survivors of the Nazi camps and internment camps, Jewish resisters, hidden children, recalling the interaction with regional history and visits of the relevant sites. Through these individual stories the collective amplitude of the tragic fate of the Jews of France during the Occupation becomes clear: 76 000 Jews were deported to Poland from France.

Closing session: At the end of the morning all the participants including the young people and the survivors are invited to symbolically light a candle in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and to observe a minute of silence.

Under the aegis of the Mémorial de la Shoah, in partnership with the ‘Amicale du camp de Gurs’, The Loiret Study and Research Center on Internment Camps and the Deportation of the Jews (Beaune-la-Rolande, Pithiviers, Jargeau), The European Center for deported Resisters -The site of the former concentration camp in  Natzweiler - French Ministry of Defense, the les Milles Camp Foundation, The Izieu Children’s Home – Museum/Memorial of the Izieu Children, The Museum/Memorial at the Rivesaltes Camp -  Pyrenees-Orientales General Council.

Monday January 25 and Tuesday January 26, 2010,
8 pm

Recital-Reading

"If This is a Man"
By Primo Levi
François-René Duchâble, piano.
Alain Carré, Adaptation and Reading
New creation.

© Isabelle Griot
After a thirty year career as an international concert pianist of world renown, François-René Duchâble is now released from the imposed exercises. Today he wants to produce a new kind of musical experience for the public rather than a concert.

The duet with the actor-director Alain Carré has given more than 40 surprising performances. This exceptional creation for the Mémorial de la Shoah is a solemn reading of Primo Levi’s autobiographical story, written by the survivor-deportee and writer, between December 1945 and January 1947, accompanied by the music of Jean-Sebastian Bach, Franz Liszt, and Frederic Chopin.

Venue:  Edmond J. Safra Auditorium
Concert in support of the Mémorial de la Shoah.
Entrance fee: 35 Euros.
Tickets can be purchased on site before the performance
Or every day from 2pm-6pm except Saturday.

Reservations on line.

Wednesday January 27,
9:30-1pm.

Screening-discussion for high school pupils
The First Deportees

Screening of the film: ‘Premier Convoi’ (The First Convoy) by Pierre-Oscar Levy (1992, 100 min) with Henri Borlant (witness) and Alexandre Borycky, Association Convoi n°6

Moderator: Claude Singer, in charge of the Mémorial de la Shoah pedagogy department.

Free of charge for pupils in the Paris area under the partnership with the Ile de France Regional Council.

Information and Reservations: 01 53 01 17 26

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Spiritual music in the midst of Nazi turmoil.
Symposium as part of the ‘Festival Voix étouffées’ (Stifled voices)

The purpose of the ‘Voix Etouffées’ Forum is to rediscover the composers who were persecuted under Nazism between 1933 and 1945. In parallel to their performances, the Forum organizes symposiums. This year’s international symposium is devoted to Jewish and Christian spiritual music in Nazi Germany as well as in the Powers of the Axis, the allied nations and the occupied or annexed nations. How did the defense and illustration of the art of Hazanout manage to survive in Berlin between 1933 and the beginning of WWII? Does the work of composers such as Arnold Schönberg, Hans Gal, Arno Nadel and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco bear the mark of those infamous times? What were the characteristics of the music in underground synagogues in France between 1940 and 1944? Once peace was restored, how was liturgical music organized in displaced persons’ camps?

Program:

10:30
Conference: From Persecution to the Return of Peace

De Profundis Cantata (1936) by Hans Gal (1890-1967): a spiritual response to Nazi persecution by Suzanne Snizek, University of British Columbia (Canada).
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968), friend of Arturo Toscanini and composer of religious music refugee in the United States, by Ettore Tappi, Music historian (Florence).
Arno Nadel (1878-1943) and sacred Jewish music in the ‘Jüdischer Kulturbund’, by Lily E. Hirsch, University of Cleveland (USA).
Underground Jewish liturgical music in France between 1940-1944.
The restoration of Jewish sacred music in occupied Germany (1945-1950) by Tina Fruehauf, Columbia University of New York.
 
 
3pm
Screenings: Elégies d’Auschwitz (Elegy for Auschwitz)

By Fréderic Cristea and Amaury du Closel
(Grande-Bretagne, 2009, 40 min, KMI Productions London)
This documentary relates Amaury du Closel’s journey to Auschwitz with his musicians in April 2009, as well as the master class and the concert performed there at the Karol Szymanowski Music School in April 2009.

‘Sons lointains’ (Sounds from afar)

By Bernhard Pfletschinger
(Cologne, 2009, 45 min, Schnittstelle Productions)
This documentary describes the ban of music composed by Jews in Germany between 1933 and 1945 and includes testimony by Berthold Goldschmidt, Tzi Avni and Haim Alexander. Ms. Ursula Mamlok (*1923), American composer born in Berlin who fled Nazi Germany in 1939 was to become honorary professor at the University of New York.
Ursula Mamlok will be in attendance.

8pm
Concert: Ensemble K
(90 min including intermission)
The Ensemble K is the result of the shared interest in the theme of ‘degenerate art’ (entartete Kunst) of its three founding members: Élodie Haas, violin, Thomas Zimmermann, clarinet and Thierry Ravassard, piano. They will be interpreting chamber music composed by Hans Gal, Srul Irving Glick, Paul Hindemith and Ursula Mamlok at the Mémorial de la Shoah.

For this performance the cellist Thérése Bussière-Meyer will join the founding members of Ensemble K.

Reservations required at ‘Forum des Voix étouffées’: 331 44 83 03 00.

Full program and prices at: www.voixetouffees.org

Symposium:

Wednesday January 27, 2010, Jerusalem Hall at the Grande Synagogue de la Victoire
Thursday January 28, 2010, Mémorial de la Shoah
Friday, January 29, 2010, Presbytery at the Reformed Church ‘Eglise réformée de l’Oratoire’.

Sunday January 31, 2010
3:30 pm

Encounter: Living after the Holocaust

Encounter with the witnesses in the film “La Vie après la Shoah” (Life after the Holocaust)
Documentary under the initiative of Claude Berda, directed by Francis Gillery (France, 2009) dealing with the issue of deportees returning to everyday life. Although they are still haunted until today by their experience in the death camps, these survivors chose to give their testimony.

With Charles Baron, Marceline Loridan-Ivens, Elie Buzyn, survivors.
Moderator: Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci, historian, professor at the University of Grenoble II.

Under the chairmanship of Mme Catherine Vieu-Charier, deputy Mayor of Paris in charge of Remembrance and Veterans.

Venue: Edmond J. Safra Auditorium
Free of charge

Marceline Loridan-Ivens.
© D.R.



Reservations on line