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November 10, 2000/12 Heshvan 5761, Vol. 53, No.7
Music and love triumph over tragedy
LEISAH NAMM
Staff Writer
In an exploration of his family's history, author Martin Goldsmith reveals a story of love and hope in a time of horror.
His book, "The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany" (John Wiley & Sons, Inc. $24.95 hardcover), relates the experiences of his musician parents, Günther and Rosemarie, in Nazi Germany.
In telling the story, Goldsmith helps the reader feel the frustration German Jews experienced in the prewar period of escalating persecution and repression. He incorporates historical events with the personal story of his parents and offers fresh insight into the work of an organization that played a major role in saving his parents' lives, the Judische Kulterbund, Jewish Culture Association.
The association was founded in 1933, after more than 8,000 Jewish musicians, actors and other artists were expelled from German performance companies and Jews were restricted from entering "Aryan" theaters. A handful of German Jewish community leaders responded to these prohibitions by organizing the Kulterbund, intending to solve the problem of the artists' unemployment and to boost the morale of the Jews of Germany.
However, the founders knew that they first had to get the approval of the authorities.
Goldsmith writes that Hans Hinkel, a high-ranking Nazi, saw the Kulterbund as a way to help further the Nazi aim of a "Jew-free" society and as a form of propaganda to show the world how "well" Jews were being treated under the Third Reich. And so the organization earned the endorsement of Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
The Kulterbund may have saved the lives of several Jews and provided entertainment in a time of despair. But, Goldsmith noted in an Oct. 10 appearance at Borders at Biltmore Fashion Park in Phoenix, some observers believed it gave the Jews a "false sense of security," even as it enabled them to maintain "some sense of normalcy."
He cites a 1933 statement of intent from the Cologne Kulterbund:
"The goal of our stage ... is to bring to all people the joy and courage to face life by letting them participate in the eternal values of poetry or by discussing the problems of our time, but also by showing lighthearted pieces. We intend to keep the connection with the German Homeland and to form at the same time a connecting link with our great Jewish past and with a future that is worth living for."
In detailing the lives of his family members, Goldsmith conveys the loss of dignity Jews experienced at the hands of the Nazis. One degrading moment came during Kristallnacht, when Goldsmith's paternal grandfather, Alex Goldschmidt, was arrested at home in the early morning hours of Nov. 10, 1938, and forced to march alongside 42 other Jewish men of Oldenburg through the city's winding streets, past the burning synagogue, the store he had owned, a home he had once lived in, as the townspeople laughed and jeered.
"But as he passed Schüttingstrasse he permitted himself to gaze down the street toward the corner he knew so well, toward the building he had purchased with so much hope and pride (27) years before, to the place where his son Günther was born and where he had tried to do his best to contribute to the well-being of his city. He'd worked hard - his fellow prisoners had all worked hard - to make Oldenburg a better place to live. And this degrading public spectacle was their reward."
In the midst of the terror surrounding them, Rosemarie and Günther fell in love and eventually immigrated to the United States, where they became citizens in 1947.
Goldsmith is a senior commentator on National Public Radio. From 1989 until 1999 he was the host of "Performance Today," a classical music program.
"The Inextinguishable Symphony" is available in bookstores and online.
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