Essential Music of the Holocaust: Ani Maamin
How can music be essential to the Holocaust? Eliyana Adler (article referenced below) writes that singing should be considered an important element of resistance, and laments that it is not often so considered, for example, citing Prof. Yehudah Bauer’s omission of music in his discussion of Resistance. Whether or not it was effective—music and songs did not often ultimately save lives, the production and performance of works of music was a significant act of defiance, and a cultural record that played and continues to play an important role in ensuring that the Holocaust does not erase the memory of what happened. Perhaps for this reason, songs of the Holocaust were and remain part of nearly every memorial to the Holocaust.
The most well-known of these is no doubt the anthem Ani Ma’amin. The words come from a liturgical summary of the 13 principles of Maimonides (from his commentary on Chapter 10 of the Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin), worded as a Credo for synagogue recitation, “I believe in perfect faith…” This is the twelfth principle: “I believe in perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even though he tarries, I await him, every day, to come.” It is difficult to reconstruct the history of the song Ani Ma’amin, and even the exact melody. The two examples above were copied from websites about Modzhitz Hasidic melodies. Those looking carefully at the music may note that one of the versions has more of the accidentals and modality of traditional Jewish music (e.g. lowered second note and raised third of the scale, rather than the standard minor key). As for the history of the song’s composition, the general outline of the story readily emerges from reviewing material easily available on the internet in Hebrew, English and to a certain extent in Yiddish.
http://www.modzitz.co.il/%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9F/%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%20%D7%A9%D7%9C%20%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%92%D7%95%D7%9F/235/%D7%94%D7%97%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%93%20%D7%A8%D7%91%D7%99%20%D7%A2%D7%96%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%90%D7%9C%20%D7%93%D7%95%D7%93%20%D7%A4%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%92%20%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%94
http://modzitz.org/story001.htm
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/107189/jewish/Ani-Maamin.htm
(see other links available from these sites).
R. Azriel-David Fastag (1890-1942) was one of the two most prominent developers of the songs for which the court of the Modzhitzer rebbe was famous. Fastag was noted as a composer and singer in Warsaw; 1500 people were said to have paid for tickets to come to services he led, with a capella (choir).
Fastag was among those deported from Warsaw to their deaths at Treblinka in 1942. The story goes that the words of Ani ma’min appeared to him and he began singing this song on the cattle-car—and gradually everyone joined in. He challenged those in the car to volunteer to try to bring this song to the Modzhitzer Rebbe, reportedly offering “half his portion in the world-to come” to anyone who would do so. Two young men volunteered and were able to jump from the car. Only one survived and he was able to get to safety and to deliver the music to the Modhzitzer Rebbe.
Up to the escape from the cattle car, most of the reports are pretty much the same. Often the accounts note that the singing could be heard outside the cattle-car. While most retellings refer to Fastag, Simon Zucker—who, like most others, ascribes the melody to the Modzhitzers—says it was the Rebbe of Grodzisk Mazowiecki, R. Israel Shapiro, who led his followers in singing this song.
Reports about how and where Fastag’s melody came to the Modzhitzer rebbe’s attention differ in details. Some appear to have the young man come to the Rebbe in Israel or in New York; others have him send a messenger to hand-deliver the melody. In some, it is the boy himself who wrote the notes, others recount that Fastag annotated the music and gave it to the young men. Still others say the young man sang the melody to someone who was able to write it down once he had escaped to safety.
Some of the websites I surveyed have a full account of the story, but ass a postscript saying the story should be considered a literary creation, and not necessarily an accurate presentation of the facts of the matter. The Modzitz.org website says the account of R. Azriel David Fastag is “based on HaRakeves HaMisnaggenes, “The Singing Train," a story by P. Flexer in M.S. Geshuri's Negina v'Chassidus b'Veis Kuzmir u'Bnoseha and a story in Sichas HaShavua # 654”—so perhaps we should assume that the story, as it is usually told, is derived from Flexer’s account (as of this writing, I have not been able to examine Geshuri’s volume or the Sichat hashavua).
To my mind, the most detailed and believable version of the story of how the melody arrived at the Modzhitzer’s court is that the surviving young man reached Switzerland, put the melody into writing, and eventually had someone deliver it to the court of the “Imrei Shaul” (Rabbi Saul Yedidya Elazar Taub 1886-1947) in Brooklyn, New York. It reached the Modzhitzer Rebbe on the day he was celebrating the Brit Milah of a grandson. The Rebbe opened the message and asked R. Ben-Tzion Shenkar to sing the song. R. Yitzhak Huttner was there as well. R. Huttner had known R. Azriel-David Fastag in Warsaw, and had eaten in his home. Obviously, the message and one last niggun from R. Fastag made an outstanding impression.
Ben-Tzion Shenkar was a young man who had sung with Cantor Joshua Pilderwasser, had studied music and composition, and became a disciple of the Imrei Shaul about 1940. Thus if this version of the story of Ani Maamin is true, it is an early example of Shenker’s immense significance in Jewish music. The melody quickly gained recognition, and was described as the “Song of the Ghetto” or “Melody (nigun) of the Ghetto” and was sung in America and Palestine in remembrance ceremonies.
If in fact the melody was known only because it was sung the Modhzitzer’s court in April 1945 in New York, it was not sung in the ghettos or at Auschwitz, achieving its fame only after the war as the quintessential song of Holocaust remembrance.
(Citations in Eliyana Adler, “No Raisins, no Almonds” Shofar, 24:4 2006, 55: Kazcerginski, Lider, xxxiv, Mlotek and Gottlieb, We are Here, p. 76, Rubin, Voices of A People, 425, Simon Zucker, The Unconquerable Spirit 27. Adler writes about Ani Ma’amin pre-existing the Holocaust; she writes in such a way that I am not sure whether she considers the words only to have pre-existed, as obviously they did, or setting the words to this melody as well).
Whether or not it was sung during the Holocaust itself more widely than in a single cattle car, Ani Maamin was incorporated early on into memorial ceremonies for Yom Ha-Shoah, into liturgies for Israel Independence Day, and memorial programs on, e.g. Israel Radio.
(Dalia Ofer, The Strength of Remembrance: Commemorating the Holocaust During the First Decade in Israel JSS 6:2 2000, p. 36).
Seth Ward
This image may be easier to open than the one in the previous posting.
News Release from Laramie Jewish Community Center.
This Sunday, November 4th at 2:00 p.m. the "Colorado Hebrew Chorale," under the direction of its founder and music director, Carol Kozak Ward, presents a program of “Essential Music of the Holocaust" in the Wyoming Union West Yellowstone Ballroom at UW.
The program includes anthems sung at concentration camps and by partisans fighting the Nazis, poetry written by survivors and sung by displaced persons, and pieces composed by leading European musicians whose lives were cut short by the Holocaust. Their website is: www.coloradohebrewchorale.org
There will be a reception following the performance.
Please join us!
Laurie Dirks
President, LJCC
Gene Plunka states that “Drama has proven to be an effective medium for representing the Holocaust.” (16) In this book, he reviews many of the most important plays about the Holocaust, providing analytic accounts of the characters, and extremely detailed synopses of the plays. He is above all a theater historian and critic, giving background information about how each play came to be written and about the world-view it was supposed to represent, and offering a critical assessment of where it succeeded and where it did not replete with analysis of production and staging, number of performances, and critical reviews. These details provide invaluable contextualization: literary works, including these dramas, have been so influential in shaping our conceptualization of the Holocaust that it is easy to lose sight of how they were created, staged, and received.
While each chapter places the individual plays described in it into perspective, the introduction is the only place where a truly broad overview is offered; in the rest of the book, each chapter discusses a play or group of plays, and could easily be a stand-alone article on the subject. There is no overall conclusion reviewing the findings, discussing the significance of the conclusions, and charting an overall path through staged presentations of the Holocaust theme. While this would be my personal preference, it is not really Plunka’s purpose in this book.
Plunka lays out two overall goals, first, to ensure "accuracy and faithfulness to the Shoah"—although recognizing that playwrights have substantial latitude—and second, to serve as an effective drama critic (19). A concluding essay could have allowed for more attention to larger themes, such as the first of these two goals and questions such as the degree to which the "wide latitude" in the plays examined did or did not trivialize the event or disrespect the dead (19)—and an overall treatment of the such topics as “accuracy and faithfulness” in staged drama, where the characters must loom larger than life, even though they are portraying the Holocaust, the enormity of which is itself often seen as larger than any study or drama can portray. As for the second goal: Plunka is a skillful critic, and has much to day about the symbolism and meaning of the plays, unfolding development of characters’ attitudes to the Holocaust, and the attitudes of the playwrights to the most important issues in depicting the Holocaust on stage. Again, my personal preference would have been for an overall conclusion about the significance of such critical review, and the ways in which these dramatic productions reflected—and re-shaped—popular understanding of the Shoah and discourse about it.
To a certain extent, the discussion of the plays is driven instead by the delineation of five goals of Holocaust drama, based on the work of Robert Skloot: homage to the victims, educating audiences, inducing empathy, raising moral and ethical questions, and drawing lessons from history. (17) Thus, Plunka sees Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy: A Christian Tragedy most importantly as falling under the rubric of raising moral and ethical questions. The play engendered much discussion regarding the Vatican’s role in the Holocaust, a topic that remains controversial today. Plunka sees the heart of the play as the “assumption of moral responsibility” which leads him to take issue with the typical understanding of the play, noting that the Papal Deputy’s choice “vindicates the Church, and when viewed in this manner, his martyrdom is a tribute to, not an attack upon Christianity.” (183). Seeing the play as ultimately about moral choice, Plunka lambasts Hochhuth’s decision to lengthen the play by adding a fifth, final act set in Auschwitz, calling it a “critical mistake.” The fifth act lengthens the time needed to mount the play, not only by the extra act, but by elaborations of characters really needed only to support it; otherwise it could be mounted in four hours or less. But loss of focus may be the heart of the critical problem. Opining that the purpose of the extra act appears to have been to associate Auschwitz with evil and to question God’s role, he says “those two topics are not germane to the central notion of moral responsibility and even muddle the issue unnecessarily.” (185)
As the discussion of The Deputy focuses on category of examining moral and ethical questions, in his final choice, Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes, Plunka appears to focus on the category of drawing lessons from history—indeed, he notes that it alerts us to Wiesel’s plea not to forsake the Holocaust’s lessons. Rebecca’s vision of the Holocaust at the end of the play—of Nazis ripping babies from their mothers—“allows her to refuse to be victimized again and again and again.” His final remark is that this play “makes us aware that such genocide could begin again if we do not recognize that the personal is meshed with the political.” (326-327).
The Holocaust is one of the enduring symbols of our times: a foundation stone of our narrative about good and evil, about society and values, about who we are and how we came to be who we are. We use fraught terms to designate actors in this all-too-real and all-too-evil drama: survivors, victims, liberators, resistors, deniers[1]—and even treat this status as a heritage, using terms such as 2nd and 3rd generation, or asking where someone’s grandfather was in the Holocaust. Drama is indeed an effective medium for reflecting on the Holocaust, debating issues and lessons, and indeed, defining the parameters of discourse. Thus Plunka convincingly argues that Hochhuth adding Auschwitz was a critical mistake but in retrospect, Auschwitz is such a potent embodiment of evil, that it’s easy to imagine why he thought it was dramatically necessary—and its inclusion could only increase the visibility of Auschwitz.
Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity functions best on the level of individual plays, both for its insightful analysis of style, focus, plot, and character, and for its critical assessment of staging, production and reception. Taken as a whole, it is a fruitful basis for discussion of issues of dramatic accuracy and faithfulness, of coherence and focus, and of the extent to which dramatic presentations of the Holocaust trivialize it and render it banal or a mere metaphor or symbol—or memorialize, crystallize issues and teach transformative lessons. This is an important read for dramaturgs and students of theater, for professors of literature and intellectual history, and for the general reading public concerned with the presentation of the Holocaust.
Seth Ward
[1] Holocaust Resistors do not play much of a role in the book under review, but they are the subject of Plunka’s most recent book, the just-released Staging Holocaust Resistance (Palgrave 2012).
I am moderating a talkback discussion on the play 16 Wounded in Jackson WY next week, at Off the Square, Oct. 10. The play will be done “open book” -- they are rehearsing but do not expect to be able to do all the lines from memory yet. I am not sure how much explaining, commenting or moderating I will be doing but presumably the session will have some responses from the actors, and Q&A from the audience.
Students in History and Literature classes should consider coming. The play articulates some important questions regarding a central issue of the Arab/Israeli situation: to what extent is the Holocaust the “father” of the situation in Israel, and what we would call today Palestinian angst, victimhood, and terror its “unnatural son.” Can close family-like relations overturn the innate character of historic family relations? How do we understand victimhood and violence in the Middle East?
The Holocaust and Israeli-Palestinian impasse are two fundamental images that shape our world-view today about evil, about violence, and about forgiveness and love. Although I personally think that Arab-Jewish violence and the continuing, indeed—growing—symbolic power of the Holocaust are at least as much the result of other issues and trends than their cause, these are important elements that shape our world today. And, regardless of what one thinks about the Holocaust, about Palestine or Israel, the play’s exploration of the interpersonal dynamics of what functions as a kind of adoptive family raises important questions for discussion in our world of atraditional family units.
In some ways, the characterization of the Arab violence in the play reminds me of issues raised in numerous recent films. For example, the issues are similar to those raised by both by Palestinians in the prizewinning movie Paradise Now, and by Israelis in Weekend in Tel Aviv (translation of the Hebrew title; its English language release title was For my Father). in my humble opinion, they are raised in other ways—and in the context of even discussing how to make a film about violence—in the Tunisian film The Making Of, le Dernier Film. The answer is quite different from the way that friendship transcends marriage and stands up to extremism in Wedding Song, a film by a Jewish French filmmaker of Tunisian heritage. (I had suggested some of these films for a second program at Off the Square it was not possible to put this program together).
The play is worth seeing.
Seth Ward