A cello owned by a Hungarian composer killed in Kaunas during the Holocaust has been discovered eight decades later. Saved and hidden from the Nazis, the instrument attests to the invincibility of music, says the composer’s daughter.
Guests at the commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust in the European Parliament this week could hear a cello performance. This was a cello with a special story. The instrument belonged to the Budapest-born composer Pal Hermann who took it with him everywhere, from Berlin to Amsterdam and London.
“I couldn’t imagine him without his cello. When I used to see my father, I used to see his cello. He never left it,” recalls Corrie Hermann, the composer’s daughter.
“Dad played everywhere and had a job in Berlin. Then came 1933. Hitler came to power and started persecuting Jews. Life became very difficult.
The family moved to the Netherlands, but soon a tragedy struck the family, Corrie’s mother died. Looking for work, Pal Hermann went to live in Brussels, then Paris, leaving his young daughter with relatives.
“The last time I saw my father was just before the war in August 1939,” Corrie recalls. “I was in the Netherlands and Dad came to visit me during the summer holidays. I always enjoyed it when he came. It was fun – we played, he joked, I got a present.”
During the war, Pal Hermann was hiding on a farm in southern France. Having left behind a daughter and buried his wife, the composer found it difficult to cope with the loneliness of the countryside, so he would sometimes travel to the nearest town, Toulouse.
It was there that he was captured and taken to a concentration camp near Paris. From there, he ended up in Kaunas.
“In total, 73 convoys were taken from the camp of Drancy,” says Vytautas Petrikėnas of the Ninth Fort Museum. “One of them, number 73, arrived in Kaunas. Five of the 10 wagons were left in Kaunas, these people were taken to the Ninth Fort, a selection was made and a few dozen people were taken to Pravieniškės to work, while the weaker ones remained in the fort and awaited their fate. They were shot there.”
After a long period of hiding, Hermann was weak and unsuited for work. He was probably among those killed immediately.
“My father was thrown on a train with other people,” says Corrie Hermann. “He managed to throw away a note that said, ‘in spite of everything, we have a lot of hope’.”
In the letter, Hermann also asked that someone look for his cello and protect it from the Nazis. The composer’s last wish was heeded: a swineherd broke into Hermann’s house, took the cello and hid it.
“On the back of the cello, there is a Latin inscription, ‘I am the Soul of Music’. This cello was discovered in the Düsseldorf Academy of Music after a painstaking search,” explains Petrikėnas.
Today, Hermann’s music, played on the cello he thought missing for 80 years, is being played at a Holocaust remembrance event at the European Parliament. Hitler burned books, destroyed paintings and killed millions, but music is invincible, the composer’s 92-year-old daughter said from the podium.
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