BGSU brings German scholar, ‘Tikvah’ to Holocaust remembrance

In January 1942, 15 high-ranking representatives of the Nazi Party, German governmental ministries and the SS met at a Berlin villa to discuss cooperation in the “Final Solution”—the planned deportation and murder of all European Jews.

Dr. Norbert Kampe

The meeting was the Wannsee Conference, and the villa later became the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site. The site director, Dr. Norbert Kampe, will discuss its significance and the tragedy of the Holocaust during two weeks of appearances at the University and elsewhere in northwest Ohio, beginning April 25.

Kampe is the featured guest scholar for “Deadly Discrimination: Re-viewing the ‘Final Solution’ and its Consequences,” a collaborative project between BGSU and the Ruth Fajerman Markowicz Holocaust Resource Center in Sylvania.

A highlight of the events is an April 26 performance of “Tikvah: A Concert of Hope and Remembrance,” an oratorio by Dr. Burton Beerman, music composition. Kampe will introduce the multimedia production with Philip Markowicz, a Sylvania resident and Holocaust survivor who inspired Beerman to compose “Tikvah” (“Hope”). The 7:30 p.m. performance is set for Bryan Recital Hall in Moore Musical Arts Center.

Born in Poland, the son of a District Rabbi, Markowicz was known as a Talmud prodigy even before World War II. He was confined to the Lodz Ghetto early in the war, and when it was dismantled, the Nazis sent him to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. He escaped the gas chambers there by sneaking into a work detail when guards weren’t watching.

He subsequently survived a series of slave labor concentration camps, beatings and starvation, culminating in a death march, until he was liberated by American forces 60 years ago. Five years later, he and his family were permitted to emigrate to the United States, where, after arriving in Toledo, he and his wife built a successful business, Phil’s TV & Appliance.

Gradually resuming his study of the Talmud and the Torah, Markowicz began lecturing on the Bible and Judaism at Lourdes College and various synagogues. He is now working on a book on Torah interpretation and commentary, and has written an autobiography, My Three Lives, currently in the editing process.

Markowicz was inspired to finish his memoirs after meeting Beerman, who at the same time was moved to compose “Tikvah.”

Dr. Burton Beerman

“As the composer, I am working very closely with Philip Markowicz and utilizing my poetic skills, yet preserving the purity of the meanings of his words and his fragile, yet strong, and deeply compassionate storytelling that allows us to peer into a slice of the Jewish experience,” writes Beerman.

“It is his understanding of Jewish history, his teachings of the Torah and his undeniable sense of hope that speaks to all people who have experienced terrible tragedies in their own lives,” adds the composer, himself raised a conservative Jew in Atlanta. Beerman’s first musical experiences were the vocal music heard in synagogue services, and much of that music has found its way into “Tikvah” as quoted fragments and more extended presentations.

The music of Beerman, an internationally acclaimed and prize-winning composer, combines an eclectic mixture of styles from the classical European tradition to klezmer to avant-garde to popular music styles of today.

Beerman’s poignant and focused choice of the saxophone as the sole instrument for “Tikvah” reflects its history as an “outsider” in classical music, he said. When the Third Reich came to power, jazz music—and, by association, the saxophone—was banned and labeled a degenerate art. Yet in the concentration camps, music, including the saxophone, played a comforting and sometimes painful role for the inhabitants.

On May 10, Atlanta’s Morris and Rae Frank Theatre will host the world premiere of the full production of “Tikvah,” which blends narration and video animation with live video images of the musicians, vocalists and dancers. The excerpted production at Bowling Green will feature dancer Celesta Haraszti; the Chicago-based Atlas Saxophone Quartet; BGSU video artist Heather Elliott-Famularo, digital art; and Markowicz’s granddaughter, New York-based soprano Andrea Rae.

Heather Elliott-Famularo

Elliott-Famularo, who had previously collaborated with Beerman and Haraszti on Beerman’s composition “Playthings,” said that when he asked her to create the visual elements for “Tikvah,” she was eager to become involved. “As a visual artist, having the opportunity to work with a composer is really exciting, and especially the opportunity to work with Burton and Celesta. I think we share a similar artistic vision and goal.”

To prepare, she has read Markowicz’s memoirs, studied Beerman’s score and visited the Holocaust remembrance museum in Farmington Hills, Mich.

“My video art piece is not literal but much more interpretive,” she said. “I want to capture the emotion and the essence of the music and the book, without using the cliché images of the Holocaust you might first think of. I also wanted to capture the important theme, not just of the terror of the Holocaust, but of the hope that sometimes gets you through situations where you think this really might be the end. I think that is also part of the American dream and something that was felt by many Jews who made it to the United States.

“To me, the whole process has been incredible because of the way all the elements have come together. That the sopranist can sing her grandfather’s story, for example—that’s been the magic of this and of working together.”

Rae’s mother, Hindea Markowicz, who directs the Holocaust resource center in Sylvania, became acquainted with Kampe on a trip to Wannsee, where he has been director since 1996.

A native of then-West Berlin, he studied history, politics and literature, graduating from the Freie Universität Berlin in 1975 and completing his training for public school teaching in 1980. For his Ph.D., which he earned from the same university in 1983, Kampe researched the position of Jewish academics and anti-Semitism among academic elites at the time of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

From 1983-88, he was an assistant professor at the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, and from 1989-96, was deputy director and head of departments at the archive of the Academy of Fine Arts, both in Berlin.

Much of Kampe’s first week in northwest Ohio will be spent with students at BGSU, whose departments of history and German, Russian and East Asian languages have worked with the Holocaust resource center on the “Deadly Discrimination” project.

He will speak to history and German classes April 25-27 and, April 26, will also meet with students in BGSU’s Chapman Community at Kohl. Anyone who wishes to attend should contact Dr. Beth Griech-Polelle, history, at 2-9478, or Dr. Christina Guenther, German, at 2-7589.

On April 28, Kampe will introduce “The Wannsee Conference,” a 2002 German film that reenacts, on location, the Jan. 20, 1942, meeting. A question-and-answer period will follow the 7:30 p.m. presentation in the Gish Film Theater.

Kampe will address a Holocaust Remembrance Day observance May 5 at Temple Shomer Emunim in Sylvania. Sponsoring that 7:30 p.m. speech are the Holocaust resource center and its umbrella organization, the United Jewish Council of Greater Toledo.

This year’s project continues a series of collaborations between BGSU and the resource center, which was founded in 1980 as a source of information about the Holocaust for northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan. Previous projects have included a photography exhibit and discussions by Holocaust survivors.