Terezín composers remembered: Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas and Hans Krása

Eighty years ago, three hugely talented Jewish composers Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann were gassed in Auschwitz. Their music, created during one of the most tragic periods of European history, lives to this day.

Viktor Ullmann

Viktor Ullmann|Photo: Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Composer, conductor, pianist, writer and music critic Viktor Ullmann was one of the most outstanding and complex artistic personalities of Czech-German cultural life in the years of the First Republic. Between the wars he worked as a bandmaster of the New German Theatre in Prague. In Terezín, Ullmann composed over twenty works: three piano sonatas, a string quartet, arrangements of Jewish songs for choir, incidental music for theatre productions, the one-act opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The Emperor of Atlantis) and, as his very last melodrama, Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (The Song of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke), which he completed in 1944.  Paradoxically, Ullmann confronted Jewish themes for the first time in his life in Terezín.

Pavel Haas

Hugo Haas|Photo: APF Czech Radio

Pavel Haas was the older brother of the more famous actor Hugo Haas and one of the most talented pupils of composer Leoš Janáček. He was the author of the only tragicomic opera The Charlatan. In Terezín he composed, among other things, Four Songs on Chinese Poetry for bass and piano, first performed by his cellmate, future soloist of the National Theatre Karel Berman.

Hans Krása

Hans Krása|Photo: Pestrý týden, volume II, issue 9, page 4; Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Hans Krása was a pupil of Alexander Zemlinsky and also studied with Albert Roussel in Paris. He made his living as an accompanist at the New German Theatre (today's State Opera) and after his deportation to Terezín he made a significant contribution to the cultural life of the camp. His children's opera Brundibár was the most successful Terezín performance with more than fifty performances.

From propaganda to tragedy

Terezín Concentration Camp|Photo: Anna Kubišta, Radio Prague International

In 1944, the Nazis allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit Terezín. After almost a year of "beautification" of the concentration camp, a three-member Danish-Swiss delegation was allowed entry to the camp. The six-hour tour of the town ended with a performance of the children's opera Brundibár. The Nazis succeeded in their great hoax and took it even further when they made a propaganda film entitled The Führer Gave the Jews a City. When the propaganda mission was completed the Nazis transported 18,000 prisoners, including the author of the opera Brundibár, Hans Krása, and the children who sang in it, to Auschwitz.