THE UNDYING FLAME
A Concert/Lecture Presentation

Jerry Silverman

How could a period in history as incomprehensibly evil and inhuman as the Holocaust have given rise to such a great number of remarkable songs? What was there to sing about? Who composed the songs? Who sang? Who listened? On first glance there would seem to be no satisfying answers to these questions – just as there is no answer to the ultimate question of the WHY of the Holocaust itself. But the songs do exist. People did compose them, sing them and listen to them. The songs themselves supply the answers to these questions.

In a search for the answers, this hour-long program combing songs and readings from “The Undying Flame: Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust,” the audience is led on the terrible journey from the first Lager-Lied (concentration camp song) – composed in the Börgermoor concentration camp in Germany in 1933 – step by step through the inexorable and tragic events leading up to the Shoah, through the wartime years and up to the present. It is an eight-decade odyssey.

The songs sing of despair, hope, rage, resistance…and even humor in the face of the unspeakable. Rare recordings of voices long still, salvaged from the abyss complement the live performance. After the presentation the members of the audience are invited to ask questions and offer comments. It has happened that survivors or children of survivors in the audience have first-hand recollections of the events recounted in some of the songs.

After a concert I gave in June 2000 for the Anne Frank Society in New York, a gentleman remarked that the composers of a song in the program (who had been interned in the Dutch camp Westerbork) had sung at his bar mitzvah! It is “souvenirs” like this that give even greater meaning to the presentation.

This program has been presented, among other places, at the Anne Frank Society (NYC), the U. of Michigan, the Hidden Children of Westchester (NY), the Center For Holocaust Awareness and Information (Rochester, NY), Elmira College (Elmira, NY), The Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies (Ramapo College, NJ), the Westchester Holocaust Commission (NY), the University of Wisconsin, Manhattan College Holocaust Resource Center, Center for Holocaust Studies (Brookdale Community College, NJ), Park Heights JCC (Baltimore), Dora Teitelboim Center/Holocaust Memorial (Miami Beach), Washington U. (St. Louis), Emory U. (Atlanta), SUNY Plattsburgh (NY), U. of Vermont. U. Penn (Philadelphia), Valley and Pierce Colleges (Los Angeles), Vanderbilt U. (Nashville), New York University, US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC), Day of Memory (Vico Equense, Naples, Italy), Gratz College and Middle School (Philadelphia), Middlebury College (VT), Temple Israel (Albany, NY), Williams College (MA), U. Maryland, Gordon JCC (Nashville), Lutheran Church (Naples, Italy), SUNY New Paltz (NY), Allentown JCC (PA), Mt. Holyoke College (MA), Scranton JCC (PA), Puffin Foundation (Teaneck, NJ), Harrisburg JCC (PA), Cornell U. (NY), Holocaust Memorial Days in London, Iona College (New Rochelle, NY ), NYU Music Dept., Cedar Crest Village, (Pompton Plain s, NJ), Sholom Aleichem Cultural Center (Bronx), Makor (NYC), JCC on the Palisades (Tenafly, NJ), Bellarmine U. (Louisville, KY), "Baseball Songs" on the Plaza at Lincoln Center, NY, and numerous Jewish Centers and Temples.

Additional flyers from other performances: (click for larger view)