#OTD in 1933 the Editors Law (Schriftleitergesetz) forbade non-“Aryans” to work in journalism. Under the new law, the association kept registries of “racially pure” editors and journalists, and excluded Jews and those married to Jews from the profession. de.wikipedia.org/wik...

Polish poet, writer and translator Jerzy Ficowski (born #OTD 1924) was a member of the Polish resistance. He was imprisoned in the infamous Pawiak and took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Organist, choirmaster, composer and writer Ernst Maschke was born #OTD in 1867. On 8 Oct 1936 the then 69-year-old was subjected to a professional ban. After denunciation, Gestapo invaded his house and he suffered stroke which killed him on 29 Mar 1940. www.lexm.uni-hamburg...

Pianist and pedagogue Wanda Kopecka was born #OTD 1885. In 1941, she was forced into the Warsaw ghetto but continued to teach. Caught in the deportations of Jews from the ghetto in Oct 1942, she was murdered in Treblinka. czestochowa.wyborcza...

Jewish musicologist, composer, playwright, poet, and painter Arno Nadel was born #OTD in 1878. Although he had an exit visa to England, he was too weak to make the journey. On 12 Mar 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz where he was murdered the same year. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

Administrative and artistic director Werner Josef Levie was born #OTD 1903. He led the Berlin Judischer Kulturbund with Kurt Singer. Deported to Bergen-Belsen, he died of typhus on a train near Tröbitz after liberation in May 1945. www.joodsmonument.nl...

Irma Trksak was born #OTD 1917. Involved in Czech cultural, theatre and music groups, she said "Singing was for me—I would say always—life-saving. It was a part of my nature, it always and in every situation helped me, to sing." holocaustmusic.ort.o...

First violin at the Vienna Philharmonic Max Starkmann (born OTD in 1880) was deported on Oct 5 1942 with his wife Elsa Starkmann to the extermination center at Maly Trostinec near Minsk where he was murdered soon after. wphdata.blob.core.wi...

Israeli composer Ödön Pártos was born #OTD in 1907 in Hungary. In 1934 he escaped Berlin and returned to Budapest. He eventually immigrated to British Mandatory Palestine in 1938 when invited to join the Palestine Orchestra. de.wikipedia.org/wik...

Jan van Gilse was appointed director of the Ultrecht Conservatory #OTD in 1933, a post he accepted upon leaving Berlin after the rise of the Nazis. He refused to join the RMK and his work was banned as a consequence. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

Danish pianist and composer Herman David Koppel was born #OTD in 1908. In 1943 he fled with his family to Sweden and became a pianist of the Örebro Symfoniorkester. de.wikipedia.org/wik...

Viennese conductor Karl Rankl was born #OTD in 1898. At the outbreak of WWII, he took refuge in England and became a British citizen. He became music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1946, where he had a great impact. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

Lily Assael, born #OTD 30 September 1909 in Salonica, was a Greek Jewish musician who, with her sister Yvette, played accordion in the Auschwitz orchestra. She survived Auschwitz and died in New York on Aug 3, 1990. de.wikipedia.org/wik...

Wolfgang (Wolfi) Lederer was a pianist, accordionist and conductor born in Berlin #OTD in 1918. He survived Terezin where he played accordion and piano. After the war, he was a successful jazz pianist. cuislandora.wrlc.org...

Composer, pianist and musicologist James Simon was born #OTD in 1880 in Berlin. In spring 1944, he was sent to Westerbork and, on April 4, was one of a 1000 inmates deported to Terezín. On 12 October he boarded the transport to Auschwitz. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

German school teacher Clara Rupp was born in Konzelsau #OTD in 1901. After 1933 she was fired and several times arrested for communist resistance until transported as one of the first prisoners to Ravensbrueck on 25.05.1939. She survived. full-english-books.n...

Composer and copy writer Robert Gilbert was born #OTD in 1899. Gilbert enjoyed a few successes but his potential composing career was interupted by exile in the Bronx. He had more success copy wrting for Hans Eisler and Werner Richard Heymann. www.lexm.uni-hamburg...

The premiere of the Terezín version Brundibar took place on 23 September 1943 in the hall of the Magdeburg barracks. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

Because of overcrowding in Dachau, composer, conductor and teacher Herbert Zipper was transferred together with Jura Soyfer to Buchenwald #OTD in 1938. Although he was released in Feb 1939 this was not his final internment. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

Kapellmeister, musicologist and composer Robert Hernried was born #OTD in 1883. He fled to Vienna in 1935 and went into exile to the US in 1939 where he was professor of music theory, composition and orchestration at the Detroit Institute of Musical Art. musiklexikon.ac.at/m...

In 1943, the piano prodigy Mischa Hillesum arrived in Westerbork with his family. He died under forced labour in Warsaw. Only a few of his compositions are known. www.forbiddenmusicre...

Musicologist and university lecturer Leo Schrade (1903-1964) had his license to teach withdrawn in June 1937 then was dismissed a month later from @UniBonn. He left Germany in March 1938 for New Haven and eventually became Professor of Musicology @Yale. www.lexm.uni-hamburg...

Pianist, piano teacher and music critic Martha Mayer-Reinach (born #OTD in 1901), her husband and the conservatoire she directed were subject to antisemitic attacks from 1933. In Sep 1936, she fled with her husband to Sweden, where they settled. www.lexm.uni-hamburg...

Alice Goldschmidt-Metzger (born #OTD in 1876) was a state approved piano teacher in Wiesbaden. In the late 1920s she turned down an offer for a position at the Julliard School in NY but was forced into exile there in April 1938. www.lexm.uni-hamburg...

Composer Leo Justinus Kauffmann was born #OTD in 1901. He taught at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne and conducted the Düren choir and orchestra. He was denounced by the Nazis for his "New Music" in 1933 and died in an aerial bombing attack in 1944. de.wikipedia.org/wik...

Kurt Gerron played police chief "Tiger" Brown on the opening night of one of the greatest theatrical productions of the twentieth century, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Three Penny Opera. Gerron was sent to Westerbork with his family #OTD in 1943. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

German jazz trumpeter Hans Berry left Germany for Belgium but was dragged back and drafted into the Wehrmacht. He was captured by the Russians and interned in Focsani camp in Romania where he composed "Focsani Melody" of which a recording survives. www.deutsches-tanzar...

Composer, conductor and music writer Rikard Schwarz (born #OTD in 1897) was arrested and taken to the Zagreb Fair, then days later to Gospić, then Slana and finally to Krapje (Jasenovac I), where he died of starvation and exhaustion before the end of 1941. en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Artist Bedřich Fritta was born #OTD in 1906. He was sent to Terezin where he is recorded as a musician in Terezin municiple band. Fritta drew many of the musicians and depicted performances which took place in the camp. www.jmberlin.de/frit...

Resistance fighter Judith Auer was born #OTD in 1905. After high school she studied music for a career as a pianist but political activism and the advent of WWII meant this dream and Judith herself were to die, executed by the Nazis on 27 Oct 1944. en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Composer Peter Deutsch was born #OTD in 1901. From 1929 he wrote film music in Germany and, after exile, in Denmark. On 6 Oct 6 1943 he entered Terezin. where he led the Stadtkapelle, and selected the music for the ghetto's propaganda film. de.wikipedia.org/wik...

In 1942 Cantor Benzion Moskovitsh was sent to Westerbork then, in 1944, to Buchenwald. He sang for inmates and noted melodies he heard. Forced to sing for the Nazis, his voice saved his life. He survived a death march to Terezin. He died #OTD in 1968. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

Israeli composer Josef Tal was born #OTD in 1910 and helped found Israel's classical music roots. After studying and working in Berlin, he became unemployed due to Nazi anti-Jewish labour laws and made plans to immigrate to Mandate Palestine. www.lexm.uni-hamburg...

Conductor and composer Arthur Löwenstein was born #OTD in 1890. In 1936 he was exiled to Belgium where he was able to direct chamber and philharmonic orchestras. He died age 48 in Antwerp on July 5th 1939. de.wikipedia.org/w/i...

#OTD in 1944 a memorial concert was held in Buchenwald for Ernst Thaelmann, leader of the KPD active during Hitler's rise. A month after his death, Communist and political prisoners organised a secret event with lectures, music, poems, and songs about him. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

Composer Alberto Franchetti was born #OTD in 1860. His works were banned under the 1938 Italian race laws. Shortly before his death in 1942 he completed his final opera, Don Napoleone, which is still awaiting its world premiere. en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Hungarian violinist, violin teacher and composer Samuel Bondi was born #OTD in 1873. His name appeared in the anti-Semitic texts Judentum und Musik and Lexikon der Juden in der Musik. www.lexm.uni-hamburg...

German music publisher and patron of music Henri Hinrichsen (1868-1942) was a patriotic German who had been recognized by Wilhelm II. The Nazis deported him to Auschwitz where he was murdered on 17 Sep 1942. en.wikipedia.org/wik...

#OTD 1939 Myra Hess wrote to the BBC that, ‘Since the outbreak of war, the whole world has been listening in to England, and the entire nation has been waiting for programmes of good music befitting the dignity and seriousness of the present situation.’ holocaustmusic.ort.o...

#OTD in 1942, while waiting for their train to Paris, Anita, and her sister Renate, were arrested by the Gestapo and brought to a prison in Breslau. Their trial took place on 5 June 1943, sentencing Anita to 18 months and Renate 3½ years of hard labour. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

Musically precocious at age 5, Karol Rathaus was born #OTD in 1895. In 1932 he moved to Paris, where he worked as a film composer. Years of exile, fatigue and ill health took physical and emotional toll on him. He died in New York on 21 Nov 1954, age 59. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

French music teacher and conductor Nadia Boulanger was born #OTD in 1887. She waited to leave France until the last moment before the German invasion and helped her students to escape. She arrived in New York on 6 Nov 1940. en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Writer, publisher, musician and composer Herwarth Walden was born #OTD in 1878. He left Berlin for Moscow in 1932 but in 1938 fell victim to one of Stalin's pre-war purges of foreign nationals. He was imprisoned in Saratov, where he died in October 1941. de.wikipedia.org/wik...

Bruno Walter Schlesinger was born #OTD 1876 in Berlin. By 1898 he was a musical theatre director and a few years later director of the Bavarian state opera. Blacklisted, he left for the US in 1938 where he conducted the New York Philharmonic. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

The Austrian soprano Hilde Güden (#OTD in 1917) was one of the most appreciated sopranos of her day. In 1941, the conductor Clemens Krauss secured her for the Munich State Opera but she was forced to leave Germany on a fake passport. www.operamusica.com/...

Robbie Marcel Gosschalk was born #OTD in 1922. Deported to Bergen–Belsen with his parents Joseph and Vrouwtje–Fredrique van Esso and his brother Martijn, he was then taken by rail to Tröbitz in one of the last Nazi transports. He died there on 26 May 1945. www.musiques-regener...

Oboist Armin Tyroler was born #OTD in 1873. In 1933 he was awarded the Ring of Honour of the City of Vienna for his services to music. He was deported to Terezín on 27 Aug 1942 then, on 28 Oct 1944, to Auschwitz where he died two days later. wphdata.blob.core.wi...

Richard Mohaupt was born #OTD in 1904. His ballet was performed as part of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, but shortly after this success the Nazis denounced his work as "Music Bolshevism" and he was excluded from the RMK. So he emigrated to the US in 1939. en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Composer Arnold Schönberg was born #OTD 1874. He, together with Berg and Webern, are known as the Second Viennese School. His first compositions were Romantic in style but later became dissonant and chromatic in the style of Expressionism. holocaustmusic.ort.o...

Martin Rosenberg was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Sachsenhausen on 13 September 1939. There he set about organising a Jewish choir, which was established in April 1940 with between 20 and 30 members. holocaustmusic.ort.o...