Israeli composer Amit Weiner has been playing the music of Jewish composers who perished in the Holocaust for nine years now.
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It started in 2012 when he created a musical project called Music in Times of Tragedy that commemorates the lives and music of Jewish composers, such as Gideon Klein, Mordechai Gebirtig, Erwin Schulhoff, Viktor Ullmann, and Ilse Weber.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, his concert will be held online and streamed live as part of an event organized by the UN and the Israeli embassy in Geneva.
"I created this project in collaboration with Yad Vashem and the Jerusalem Academy of Music [and Dance] in 2012," Winter told Israel Hayom.
"It began with several concerts followed by explanations of the composers, in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. In 2016 I began working with the Foreign Ministry and embassies worldwide. I help them organize concerts and travel to play in different countries with the local musicians. This year, because of the coronavirus, the event is virtual, so we prepared three videos with an Israeli singer and a violinist, and me playing the piano."
The Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres and Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Israel to the UN Meirav Eilon Shahar are also scheduled to speak at the ceremony.
Weiner has held concerts in Singapore, China, Nepal, Thailand, Myanmar, Taiwan, and Vietnam. During his concerts, the audience learns about Jewish culture in Europe during the Holocaust and the efforts of Jews in concentration camps and ghettos to preserve cultural life against all odds.
"I think music directly touches on emotions, without the mediation of words. They go straight to the heart. I talk to the audience about various composers, the best known of whom is Mordechai Gebirtig, who was also a poet. He wrote the lyrics and the melody for Our Town is Burning.
"Wherever I go, the local embassy helps me find musicians to play with at the concert. I send them the pieces and then we rehearse. After the music, I explain to the audience the context and meaning of the works, and also give a general background about the Holocaust.
"For Jews, music has always been something special, even before the Holocaust, and it continued even under the impossible conditions of the ghetto. Every ghetto in Poland had a symphony orchestra. Many times there was nothing to eat, but there was always an orchestra. In extermination camps, music sometimes had a shocking role, like the orchestra in Auschwitz that played [music] so that the screams from the gas chambers would not be heard."
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