Defiant Requiem

Posted on by Thor

Rafael Schächter was a talented composer but the Nazi party would not let him perform. He struggled to survive but teaching piano lessons to young pupils.

Then he got new that he was being imprisoned at a work camp called Terezin. One of the few worldly possessions he took was the score to Verdi’s Requiem.

Conditions at the camp were horrible with prisoners having to work more that 10 hours a day for the Nazi party. There was never enough food. Hope was lost. Rafael realized that music is food for the soul and he began to recruit singers to join a chorus that sang each evening in a cold damp basement. Singers entered a new reality. One survivor remembered that her stomach didn’t seem to grumble when she sang. Music was a form of rebellion against imprisonment. Human dignity was regained if only for a moment.

The Verdi Reqium is a complex choral piece to perform. Rafael  molded the amateur chorus teaching them the Latin lyrics by rote. Three times Rafael had to reconstitute the choir as members were transported to Auschwitz. Then came the moment he had hoped for. The Red Cross was being shown the prison camp by the Nazi’s. The camp was scrubbed and made to look like new. Signs were made to a library, and post office, which did not exist. Swing sets and a soccer field were added.The sick and dying were shuttered behind closed doors. The sickest were sent to Auchwitz and murdered. Had the red cross veered from the tour and opened just one door they would have witnessed unimaginable horrors.

Rafael was going to  have his choir sing directly to the Nazi officers what they could never say. The requiem is a treat against the unjust. The words are in Latin but they could be interpreted to condemn the Nazis to one day face their punishment for their crimes.” that day will dissolve the world in ashes, as David and the Sibyl prophesied. How great will be the terror, when the Judge comes who will smash everything completely!”

Half or the chorus was carted off in cattle cars to Auschwitz right before the performance. The hope was that the red cross would see the performance as defiance against the Nazi captors. The red cross only saw what the Nazis wanted them to see.

After the red cross left, the swing sets vanished as did all the children. 15,000 children lived in the work camp, of whom about 90% perished after deportation. In the following weeks the entire chorus was shipped off the Auschwitz in cattle cars. Rafael survived Auschwitz and several other concentration camps but died on a death march just months before the Nazi’s surrendered at the end of the war.

If Terazin wasn’t pure hell then it was the waiting room for hell. The prisoners were surrounded by man’s worst but they were determined to demonstrate mans best through music.

Defiant Requiem is being performed at the Dr Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. In Steinmetz Hall 445 South Magnolia Avenue, Orlando FL.

Saturday, September 14, 2024
Show time: 7:30 p.m.
Tickets from: $49
Age advisory: Recommended age 13+

The run time for the concert is 2 hours with no intermission.

After Pulse: Sherri Monroe

Posted on by Thor

Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse Nightclub Massacre on June 12, 2016. It may contain sensitive and difficult to read content. Post written with narrator’s consent.  

Sherri Monroe is the executive director of the Red Cross of Greater Orlando. The red cross provided immediate services to first responders and victims families in the aftermath of the Pulse massacre.

At that time she was stationed in Daytona. On the Sunday morning following the shooting she turned on the news. Shootings are pretty common in any city, but the numbers were shocking. This wasn’t some kind of altercation. She stated to get a feeling of the scope of what was going on. You don’t expect something like that to happen in your area.

She knew Red Cross would be responding but se  wasn’t part of the Orlando branch. Red Cross was one of the first organizations on the scene other than first responders. Their roll initially was supporting first responders. It’s summer its hot, so we provided water, snacks and food.

What Red Cross did in this situation is sort of similar to hat the FBI did. No matter how prepared Orlando Police might have been, they were not prepared for this. The FBI knew what to do because they have seen this all before. Red Cross sort of did that on the community side. Within 24 hours people were on the ground here who had been through Sandy Hook, and other mass shooting events. They had seen this before. A local church immediately provided their address as a family assistance center. Red Cross stepped in to say ‘Look this isn’t going to work.’ It was fine for the moment, but there was no way to keep the families protected. That was part of the reason Camping World Stadium became an assistance center. They could set up all the resources from all the different agencies. But most importantly they had a fence around it. They could let the families in and close the gates to keep media and curiosity seekers out.

The Red Cross worked closely with the city to help them figure out what they needed to do next. They also let then know what was coming. You have to stay in front of the situation. It is hard to come back from behind. The following week with all of the vigils, and all of the events, the Red Cross brought in a lot of mental health counselors that could be at those events. They also provided water and simple things like that. The city had set up a 242-7 call line out of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), but they didn’t have enough people to man it. The Red Cross ran it for them. Sherri was responsible for keeping enough volunteers on the lines. People might call if they could not locate someone, or their car was stuck in the area around Pulse which was locked down, or a call might be about how to transport a body back to Puerto Rico. Mental health counselors were available to talk to the people taking the phone calls. Some calls were challenging.