Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Larry Wayne - 2005

Verdi Requiem

There's a famous case, Theresienstadt where...

Theresienstadt they tried to make this a picture ghetto, you know.

But there was a very famous conductor there and they did a Verdi Requiem.

I know, I know the story, I read the story in the Reader's Digest.

And then they took them all.

Right. They took them all.

Right after that performance.

And, and during the performance of the, of Verdi's Requiem, uh, when they came to the part of uh, you know what, the Requiem, Day of Judgment, when Day of Judgment will come--I get goosebumps when talking about it, you know--a lot of these officers got up and walked out. There was Re...in Reader's Di...a big article in Reader's Digest about it.

There was a book about it called the Terezin Requeim.

Well no, no, but this was, this was these musicians that on a shoestring they got together an orchestra, a, a camp orchestra and one of their performances for the SS was Verdi's Requiem.

Yeah.

And then it's someone, the Day of Judgment comes, and it's, it's, it's actually a, a religious requiem. I know it has to be one of my favorite requiems. I love Verdi's Requiem. I have five recordings of it, you know, different orchestras. As a matter of fact, I saw it uh, uh, this year it was performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. A two-hour requiem.

Yeah, I'm trying to remember who the conductor was, but I can't remember. All right, well, so the Germans came in, they passed all this legislation.

Right. And most of the time they didn't uh, call you and... You heard it on the streets.

Yeah.

[interruption in interview]


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn