People who find themselves in the worst possible circumstances respond in a variety of ways.
Some despair and others hope.
Some complain and others sing.
Some give up and others find a way to fight back.
An Ilion woman traveled to the Czech Republic earlier this year to take part in a concert honoring some people who fought back in their own way by singing.
Peggy Trefzger was a member of the nearly 200-member Berkshire Choral Festival choir that presented The Defiant Requiem: Verdi in Terezin, a Concert Drama. The May 17 performance was a multi-media dramatic presentation of the Verdi Requiem, created by Conductor Murry Sidlin, with video projections, actors, a narrator, symphonic orchestra and chorus.
Between 1941 and 1945, the concentration camp Terezin (or, in German, Theresienstadt) outside of Prague, held 160,000 men, women and children prisoners. The Nazis used the camp as a warehouse for Jews before sending them on to Auschwitz. Few of the inmates who passed through Terezin survived, but four of those who did survive attended the concert.
The concert, held in an old factory building, at one time used as a riding academy, in the town of Terezin recalled the courage of one prisoner, Rafael Schaechter, and his chorus of Terezin inmates who performed Verdi’s Requiem 16 times with piano during 1943-44, sometimes for Nazi dignitaries.
“They said they sang to the Nazis what they couldn’t say to them,” said Trefzger.
Trefzger learned about the Berkshire Choral Festival from Burrell and Martha Fisher, fellow members of the Mohawk Valley Choral Society. The festival offers opportunities for choral singers to rehearse and present concerts each summer at a private college. “It’s a summer music camp for grown-ups,” said Trefzger. The festival also offers concert trips. Trefzger took part in a choral trip to Austria a year ago. In the spring, she journeyed to Prague for the concert at Terezin, drawn by the story of the inmates who sang the Defiant Requiem.
See the whole story in Tuesday's edition of The Evening Telegram.
