Special to The Palm Beach Post

The story of Hans Krasa is the story of a composer cut off in his prime, gassed to death by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1944.

But his opera for children is a story of hope despite the horror of the place where it was performed more than 50 times.

“This little opera is a symbol for freedom,” said Ela Weissberger, who played the role of the Cat in Krasa’s Brundibar 55 times at the Czech concentration camp of Terezin during World War II.

She was ultimately liberated from the camp in May 1945, emigrated to Israel in 1949, and now lives in Rockland County, N.Y.

“We were free to go, even in those very, very bad times, to go and to forget for a couple minutes our very difficult lives as children. To be free, and to sing good music.”

This Saturday night, the Young Singers of the Palm Beaches, joining with a pit orchestra of Lynn Conservatory of Music students and a Palm Beach Opera conductor, will perform Krasa’s work at the Kravis Center in a production that will imitate the sets available to the residents of the camp in the early 1940s.

Brundibar is the name of the organ-grinder in a small village, and his ability to raise money by playing music inspires two children, Aninka and Pepicek, who need to buy milk for their sick mother.

Their singing draws no attention or money, and they’re run out of the town square. So they enlist the help of a sparrow, a cat and a dog, who help them create a big chorus by enlisting all the children in the village.

The production is the largest yet put on by InSIGHT for Education, the Palm Beach County nonprofit that attempts to use the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides to teach tolerance and fight prejudice.
“It is such an important story,” said Sandra Trockman, co-president of the group. “There are so many lessons to be learned from the history of Brundibar and how it was performed.”

The Jewish Krasa, born in Prague in 1899, was interned in Terezin after Czechoslovakia fell to the Nazis in 1938. He was deported to Auschwitz in October 1944, where he was murdered.

Brundibar played an important part in an infamous Terezin propaganda film for the Red Cross, in which detainees were seen playing chess, enjoying sports and watching a production of the opera.

“I remember my mother was so excited when she learned I would have a part in this opera,” Weissberger said. “Only she was wondering how I would have the part of a cat, because Richard Wagner never had cats in his operas.”

Weissberger said she is one of only two people from the main cast who survived the war (the boy who played Brundibar fell victim to Dr. Josef Mengele, she said), along with several girls from the chorus who managed to outlast Auschwitz.

The Palm Beach Opera’s chorus master, Greg Richey, will conduct the opera, which Krasa rescored at Terezin for the reduced forces he had available, including a piano and a guitar. The show runs around 40 minutes, and will be sung in English, though the Victory Song that ends the opera will be sung in Czech, Trockman said.

For Weissberger, 81, who spoke Wednesday afternoon at the Kravis about her experience and who will be attending Saturday’s show, performing Brundibar provided rare moments of joy amid more than three years of despair.

But the opera also represents part of the never-ending quest to bear witness to the crimes of the Holocaust, and continue to educate people about it.

“I am trying very hard to let the world know not to forget,” she said. “And to remember those million-and-a-half Jewish children who lost their lives for no reason. Only that they were Jewish.”