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November 7, 2008
The internment of Jews
Musicians in British camps still created beauty.
DAVID J. LITVAK
During the Second World War, Jews were placed in British internment camps alongside Nazis and other "enemy aliens" on the Isle of Man and in various locations throughout Britain. The British also sent some of these internees, which included many musicians, academics and visual artists, to countries like Canada and Australia. This was a revelation shared by Suzanne Snizek, a University of British Columbia doctorate student, at a lecture at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver Oct. 28.
The lecture was part of a popular ongoing afternoon musical series hosted by the JCCGV seniors department, which features performances by Jewish ensembles and lectures about Jewish musicians and composers. Snizek, who is also a classical musician, was a featured performer at a previous event in this series but, this time, she spoke about the British government's decision to place many Jews in camps during the war and the thriving cultural life that the internees created in such challenging conditions.
Snizek, who performed with orchestras in her home state of Pennsylvania before moving to Vancouver, is writing her thesis about the internment of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria in Huyton, a transit camp located near Liverpool, and three other camps that were located on the Isle of Man: Peveril, Central and Hutchinson. She interspersed her talk with video interviews of some of the internees, as well as selections of original recordings of the music created in the camps. She focused not only on the cultural life in the camps, but also on the bleak and demoralizing conditions internees had to endure.
According to Snizek, the camps for the 73,000 internees (which included a disproportionately high percentage of German and Austrian nationals of Jewish descent) ranged from abysmal at places like Central (where 10 per cent of the internees were Nazis) to more humane ones like Hutchinson, where concert facilities existed and recitals were regularly held. At Huyton, which was never meant to be a permanent camp, Snizek noted that the conditions were so awful that four people committed suicide there and a despondent and confused young concentration camp survivor was shot to death.
Music was one of the primary ways that internees coped with their dismal situation, said Snizek. Many house concerts were given and they sometimes featured original compositions with sardonic titles like "Barbed Wire." Ironically, at the end of these performances, the internees performed "God Save the King" as a tribute to the host country who interned them. According to Snizek, these camps were a temporary home for many talented Jewish musicians, including Hans Gal and Franz Reizenstien, as well as Alfred Blumen, a Viennese pianist who performed throughout the United States in the 1920s, and Hans G. Furth, a pianist who graduated from the Royal Academy of Music.
Eventually, according to Snizek, the Nazis torpedoed a boatload of Jewish refugees bound for a British internment camp. Crusading British MP Eleanor Rathbone led a great public outcry about the treatment of the internees after this incident, which resulted in the dismantling of the British internment system. However, Snizek said, some of the 4,000 internees in Canada, who were sent here by the British, languished in Canadian camps after their British counterparts were freed. In addition, she noted that the British government told the Canadian government that they were sending only Nazi sympathizers to Canada but, in reality, a lot of low-risk Jewish detainees were also included in this group.
After concluding her doctorate, Snizek hopes to publish a book about this topic, not only to expose the fact that, "this great injustice happened and no one ever acknowledged it," but also to relate the story of "the incredible contribution made to society by these same people who were wronged."
The next session of the music series will take place Wednesday, Jan. 28, 1 p.m., when June Goldsmith will talk about Jewish composer Jakob Felix Mendelssohn.
David J. Litvak is a freelance writer and publicist living in Vancouver.
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