By James Conlon

“Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate…Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?” - Siegfried Sassoon

After 1945, those who performed, wrote or taught classical music worked in a culture scarred by omissions. These were not of their making, but were part of the legacy of atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. With its racist ideology and systematic suppression particularly, although not exclusively, of Jewish musicians, artists and writers, the Third Reich silenced two generations of composers and, with them, an entire musical heritage. Many, who perished in concentration camps, and others, whose freedom and productivity were curtailed, were fated to be forgotten after the war. Their music seemed to have passed with them, lost in endless silence.

By Emile Wennekes

A Dutch case study in the re-migration of European musicians after World War II¹

Early in February 1945, violinist Samuel Swaap received a liberating note that contained the following message: "You are placed in the February 5 transport to Switzerland. In order to get things settled, you are requested to go to the meeting point at Langestrasse 3 with your baggage, today: Sunday February 4, 1945, from 7:00 pm until 11:00 pm. Only hand luggage and one suitcase is allowed, because the journey will take place in an express train and no hand luggage carrier is made available." This little note for Swaap, former concertmaster of the the Hague Philharmonic (Het Residentie Orkest, meant the end of protracted hardships in the supposedly "beautified" concentration camp of Theresienstadt (Terezín)...