PBS show documents Holocaust survivors’ stories in song

This week PBS will broadcast a documentary – birthed here in the Hudson Valley – featuring a collaboration between area musicians and Holocaust survivors.

“We Remember: Songs of Survivors” premieres at 8 p.m. April 26, on PBS, PBS.org and the PBS Video app. Its timing encompasses Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which this year begins at sunset on April 27 and concludes at nightfall on April 28.

Filmmakers followed four songwriters with Rosendale-based SageArts as they worked with Holocaust survivors Friede Gorewitz, Tibor Spitz, Tommy Wald and Rita Schwartz to tell their stories in song.

Spitz, of Kingston, who was paired with songwriter Kelleigh McKenzie, described the song she created as "outstandingly beautiful," saying the two worked hard at the task.

He admonishes that "to forget about the Holocaust is to risk repeating it.' And he adds: "Like I tell students in the lectures I conduct about 10 times a year: Don't be complacent. If you don't fight for freedom, you will lose it."

Sharing their stories in song

“At a time when the world is faced with the horrors of war and hatred, we wanted to tell this hopeful story of perseverance and love," said documentary co-producer Ilene Cutler.

There is always a “leap of faith” in telling someone else’s story. However, “those kinds of fears drop away when you show up fully and listen to the elder with your whole heart,” said songwriter McKenzie, who worked with Spitz.

“Seeing the world through their eyes, getting a sense of their wisdom and perspective, it’s so intimate. Then to reflect it all back to them through song—it’s hard to describe the beauty of the experience,” McKenzie said.

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The documentary gives an inside glimpse into the creative process as McKenzie and fellow songwriters Elizabeth Clark, Jude Roberts and Michael Veitch work with the survivors to tell their stories, set them to song and ultimately produce the May 2019 concert that’s highlighted in the film. The teams worked together twice a week for six months.

It was a delicate collaboration.

Songwriters were trained by counselors from Jewish Family Service of Orange County, in “person-centered, trauma-informed practices,” said Paula Blumenau of JFS Orange, who coordinated the collaboration. “The goal of that is to train providers in processes that do not trigger Holocaust survivors,” she said.

Connecting with these elders had a profound effect on the songwriters, who say their brief collaboration left an indelible impact on their lives. Of the four, only Spitz remains. Gorewitz, Wald and Schwartz have since died.

Friede Gorewitz

Elizabeth Clark worked with Friede Gorewitz of West Nyack. “As an elder, she didn’t let her light go out," Clark said of Gorewitz. "She wasn’t hardened, angry or full of hatred. There was just a sense of love around her that stayed. I can’t meet a person like Friede and not be changed."

When she embarked on the project, Clark said: “I immediately felt it would be such a gift. And I felt there was a sense of urgency.”

Clark’s genres are world music and sacred music. But she knew that the song she would create with Gorewitz had to match the story, which was Gorewitz’s alone.

“I describe her as more of a superhero, highlighting her fierce rebelliousness,” Clark said.

“The music needed to fit who she was." A 10-minute, three-act opera resulted from their collaboration — with the third act sung by Friede herself.

“I knew there was a lot of art and music in Friede’s life,” Clark said. “Her life was incredibly full — she became friends with major composers, dancers, and artists,” Clark said.

Tibor Spitz

“I had the honor of working with the joyful, spirited Tibor Spitz, an engineer, inventor and — later in life — visual artist,” said Kelleigh McKenzie. “Tibor and his family fled into the forest when the Nazis invaded his native Slovakia, and they literally dug a hole in the side of a hill and sheltered there for seven months until the Germans retreated. He survived the Holocaust and the Soviet occupation that followed, and then defected to the West."

"Distilling Tibor’s life into song was a tremendous challenge—its depth and scope were overwhelming at first. But Tibor has an enduring, celebratory love of life that is positively infectious. He is a remarkable human.”

Tommy Wald

Jude Roberts said that he learned something from all the survivors involved in the project, including Tommy Wald of Central Valley, with whom he collaborated on song.

“What struck me most about my interaction with Tommy was the sense of humor he maintained throughout,” Roberts said.

“It was healing humor—the kind that develops as a coping mechanism to help make sense out of something unfathomable. Since Tommy was an infant when he experienced his trauma, the grief was less direct but still deep. He and his parents had made it out of France and to the US, but he lost most of his other relatives who stayed behind.”

The songs that came out of the collaborations are not direct tales of what each person survived, but reflective of his life. Roberts’ song “Suzanne” captures the deep love between Tommy and his wife, Suzanne.

“It’s the story of his experience through the lens of their love,” Roberts said.

Rita Schwartz

Songwriter Michael Veitch of Woodstock had just returned from Germany when he began working on the project in 2018. “I’d lived in Munich for two years, and I was actually studying the Holocaust,” Veitch said. “To be able to sit with people who’d experienced it from that side completed the whole picture for me.”

Veitch acknowledged that working with the survivors was almost too emotional an experience for some of the songwriters. “I went in without expectations,” he said. “We’d had the trauma training. What I didn’t realize, or expect, was that I ended up triggered; and Rita worked with me working through my own PTSD. We had a great relationship—a brief one—but it was important.”

He worked with Rita Schwartz of Port Jervis. The tune that’s showcased in his song was the easier part of the collaboration, he said: “I worked with a melody I’d had that seemed to work perfectly, with scales used in traditional Jewish music. The challenge for me was coming up with the lyrics. Sitting with Rita, getting her to open up, and writing down her phrases—through that, we came up with the title, which is the same title as a book written by her sister: ‘Above the Rain.’”

Of the work, Roberts said: “You become the vessel in which the story is carried. You hope very much that you did the person’s story justice."

SageArts is no stranger to telling the story of its elders. Its first collaborative endeavor with elders was in 2014. Since then, SageArts’ shows have featured farmers (“Unsung Heroes,” April 2016), Woodstock residents (“Woodstock Elders,” July 2016), women leaders (“Carrying the Torch,” Honoring the 100th anniversary of Suffrage, 2017), and others.

Jane Anderson is a freelance writer. Reach her at thrnewsroom@th-record.com

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: PBS show documents Hudson Valley Holocaust survivors’ stories in song