Skip to content

Where different views on Israel and Judaism are welcome.

  • Home
  • Subscribe / donate
  • Events calendar
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Israel
    • World
    • עניין בחדשות
      A roundup of news in Canada and further afield, in Hebrew.
  • Opinion
    • From the JI
    • Op-Ed
  • Arts & Culture
    • Performing Arts
    • Music
    • Books
    • Visual Arts
    • TV & Film
  • Life
    • Celebrating the Holidays
    • Travel
    • The Daily Snooze
      Cartoons by Jacob Samuel
    • Mystery Photo
      Help the JI and JMABC fill in the gaps in our archives.
  • Community Links
    • Organizations, Etc.
    • Other News Sources & Blogs
    • Business Directory
  • FAQ
  • JI Chai Celebration
  • JI@88! video

Search

Follow @JewishIndie
The Fringe Festival runs Sept. 7-17. Many members of the Jewish community are involved, including ira cooper (see video:). Check out the full offerings at vancouverfringe.com

Recent Posts

  • Vazana at Chutzpah! Fest
  • VIFF films explore humanity
  • Past, present & future
  • VIFF 2023 ticket giveaway
  • Dialogue on democracy
  • A land of contradictions
  • Love and relationships
  • Elana Wenner joins museum
  • New librarian at Waldman
  • Tulchinsky at VPL as 2023 writer in residence
  • A heartwarming gathering
  • Six weeks of fun
  • Obligated to warn of danger
  • Recovery from surgery
  • לקנדה יש תוכנית נוודים דיגיטליים חדשה
  • Resilience in facing fire
  • Trio launches campaign
  • Moment for gratitude
  • Gondar in need of help
  • Response to death sentence
  • Train as peer support
  • CJPAC bridges engagement
  • The traveling Hebrew school
  • Volunteer from your home
  • CIJA takes campaign public
  • Film is a tribute to Burquest
  • Local teens in JCC Maccabis
  • Value of community
  • Local among new olim
  • Rockower win leads to NOLA
  • Urban warfare training
  • Kalla’s toxic new thriller
  • Habonim role pivotal
  • A yearly reminder to return
  • About the Rosh Hashanah cover art
  • New recipes for a new year

Archives

Byline: A 20th Century Passion

Help Passion to Israel

Help Passion to Israel

Dr. Peter Gary discusses A 20th Century Passion, which is set to première in Jerusalem Oct. 17, in a documentary-in-the-making by Hilary Pryor and David Malysheff. (screenshot from a20thcenturypassion.org/documentary)

For most of his life, Dr. Peter Gary never spoke of the three years he spent in Majdanek, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen from the ages of 17-21, or that he and his mother were shot and left for dead on Christmas Eve, 1941. Yet, in 1993, after immigrating to Canada and British Columbia, he founded the Victoria Holocaust Remembrance and Education Society and began to lecture in schools up and down Vancouver Island and in coastal British Columbia. Over the years, he has spoken to more than 65,000 children and youth, college and university students – imparting his message that you can’t live with hate, you can only die with hate.

A 20th Century Passion is an oratorio Gary has composed that depicts the story of the Holocaust and the years preceding and following it, from the end of the First World War through the Nuremburg trials. It is a huge piece – the score alone is 587 pages – that requires a full orchestra, an adult and a children’s choir as well as four soloists plus the conductor. That’s more than 100 people involved in the performance, which is set to première Oct. 17 in Jerusalem – if there is enough to finance the rehearsals, logistics and everything else needed to bring it to life.

Gary’s wife, Judy Estrin, talks about the fundraising project in a video at gofundme.com/20thcenturypassion. She and others involved in the project are asking that people give today. Instead of a latte, give to the music. Challenge your friends to give. If each of the 65,000-plus students who heard Gary’s message over the last 25 years gave $2 to $5, the concert would be funded, a documentary made – Hilary Pryor, executive producer, and David Malysheff, documentarian, have already more than 14 hours of film “in the can” – and there would be funds to donate to help the dwindling number of survivors left.

Gary, a classically trained composer, wrote both the score and the libretto of A 20th Century Passion in the 1970s as a remembrance of the children murdered by the Nazis. The piece has never been performed. (For more on the work and a planned concert in British Columbia that was canceled, see jewishindependent.ca/holocaust-survivor-peter-garys-oratorio.)

In his talks to high school students, Gary speaks about hate, about bullying, about the Holocaust. He leaves them with a message: stamp out hate. This message is more important than ever, as the horrors visited upon Gary and his family are being repeated.

Here is an excerpt from the libretto of A 20th Century Passion by Gary:

Why do you hate me so much?
What have I done to you? –
You really haven’t, but you are a Jew!
For this alone you have to hate….
Why don’t you see me as human, awake?
You must have some feeling,
So many of us, not knowing – just killing….
Whether it’s many that I kill or few
Matters so little, since you are a Jew!
Look at our women, they’re mothers like yours;
Our whimpering children, the frightened old….
Don’t you have young ones, or fathers who….
Oh yes we have them, but none of them Jew!
Our leader decided for all you to die!
We are the masters and do as told….
Being big, strong and hardened and bold….
Look how I’m smiling the same smile you have,
Whenever I’m bleeding my blood is the same red.
I’m speaking the same voice,
Our hands are the same….
I told you, you fool Jew, I told you in vain….
You are not worthy, not human, that’s that!
I pity you man –
When you finish killing – you too are dead.

For more details about the concert and documentary, visit a20thcenturypassion.org. To donate, visit gofundme.com/20thcenturypassion.

 

Format ImagePosted on September 23, 2016September 21, 2016Author A 20th Century PassionCategories MusicTags Holocaust, Israel, Peter Gary
Proudly powered by WordPress