Author: Inna Rogatchi

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Van Gogh and the Jews: Historical Analysis

HOW THE GREAT ARTIST WAS INTRODUCED TO THE WORLD

By Inna Rogatchi ©

Part of VINCENT: Etudes on Van Gogh special project, Outreach to Humanity series of projects.

Shortened version of the essay is published in The Jerusalem Report magazine, Iss. 1, January 11, 2021. It can be read here.

Fanny and That Painting

On March 8, 1903, Fanny Flodin heard the news that her long effort to sell that painting to the museum had been approved, finally. Fanny sighed with relief. It was quite an effort for her to sell that painting which she brought with her to Helsinki from Paris when she returned to her family after the death of her husband. 

Everything in this passage hints to things special and unique in history of art and civilisation: Fanny Flodin, notable pianist whose teacher was the last pupil of Franz Liszt, was the daughter of an important Finnish statesman of Swedish origin and sister of sculptor Hilda Flodin who worked with Auguste Rodin. Fanny’s  husband, recently deceased in Paris, was no one else, but  Julien Leclercq, well-known in France as a poet, art critic and cultural figure. The museum in question was Ateneum, the National Art Gallery of Finland, the country’s principal art museum. That painting was Van Gogh’s. 

Leclercq who was a close friend of Van Gogh, have had several of his works by the artist that he bought from Theo Van Gogh’s widow, and which he also obtained in the process of that vivid non-stopping exchanges of ‘trophies’ within the artist circle in France. 

Emile Schuffenecker  (C).  Portrait of Fanny and Lucien Leclercq. Pastel on paper. 47 x 61 cm. ca 1898. The Johnson Museum of Art. Cornell University, the USA. Gift of Mrs Carol Meyer in memory of Seymour Meyer. 1936. 

In 1901, just Lecreque got ill suddenly and died very quickly from tuberculosis  to complete shock of his wife and everyone else. He was just 35. Fanny inherited 5 or 6 of Van Gogh’s paintings from her husband. She sold all but one of them in Paris before her return to Finland. But that one painting she just could not sell. So she brought it with her when she did return to Helsinki to live there with her young daughter after her recent trauma caused by the sudden death of her husband. 

The family has put quite an effort to convince the board of Ateneum Museum to acquire Van Gogh’s work.  They used their powerful connections to influence the decision, including securing the learned opinion of leading Finnish Swedish artist  Albert Edelfelt  who was the member of the board of Ateneum and who lived and worked in Paris and understood the quality and meaning of Van Gogh art far better than many others in the artistic world which largely regarded Van Gogh as ‘an obscure mad Dutchman’. According to the Ateneum documentation and thorough historical study work by prominent Finnish journalist Antti Virolanen, apart from Edelfelt, no one among the members of the Board of Ateneum have not heard Van Gogh’s name, which was completely normal in 1903. It looks like it was Edelfelt insisting and his repeated opinion that have decided the matter positively for Fanny Flodin. 

Even after the positive final decision of the Ateneum Board to acquire that painting of Van Gogh, they were bargaining with Fanny about the price back and force. Finally, the sides agreed on the sum of 2 500 marks. The equivalent of it today is Eur 11.300 . Such was the price that Ateneum Museum has paid for great Van Gogh’s Street in Auvers-sur-Oise work  ( 1890) which was initially known as Rue de Village. This very work is especially valued for two reasons: it was the one of the last works that Van Gogh painted in Auvers-sur-Oise just two months before his death; and this work has its distinct mark: the part of sky there seems to be unfinished. For a long time, art critics were discussing: was the spot with unfinished sky left by Van Gogh intentionally, or he simply did not finish the painting? This discussion is still ongoing. 

Vincent Van Gogh (C).  Street in Auvers-sur-Oise.  Oil on canvas. 1890. Ateneum, the National Art Gallery of Finland, the Antell Collection. 

Street in Auvers-sur-Oise has become the only Van Gogh work existing in Finland. For Ateneum it is simply priceless, and it is regarded as a special treasure among their very solid collection of 650 works by many great artists.  

Ateneum was very kind to loan this bright, wonderful work to the ongoing Becoming Van Gogh exhibition ( 5.09.2020 – 31.10.2021) which has been organised, despite all covid pandemic obstacles, at The Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki to celebrate the 55th anniversary of this special art institution. 

The Didrichsen Art Museum is based on the unique collection of modern art assembled by legendary patrons of art Gunnar and Marie-Louise Didrichsens. Their son Peter led the museum for many years. Currently his wife Maria is leading it. The Didrichsen family is also known as dedicated supporters of the State of Israel, and they contributed into the worthy humanitarian causes in and for Israel for many years. 

The Long Road Towards the Appreciation

Why was it so difficult to convince the members of the Board of Ateneum to acquire a big and expressive canvas by Van Gogh? Because at the time, just 13 years after Van Gogh’s death at the age of 37, his name was not that well known beyond France and partially Belgium, and he certainly was not understood as an artist at all even there.  

The situation was not helped much by the fact that Theo Van Gogh who was supporting and promoting his genius brother died just six months after Vincent being shocked beyond anything by his beloved brother’s death.  23 years later his burial, and at the same time of publishing substantial selection of Vincent’s famous letters, in 1914 devoted Theo’s widow Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, to whom we owe the preservation of Van Gogh’s works and legacy, re-buried her husband next to his brother at truly beautiful spot on the cemetery in Auvers-sur-Oise which is covered all over by ivy, the brothers’ favourite plant.  

Burial site of Vincent and Theo van Goghs. Cemetery at Auvers-sur-Oise. Open Internet Archive. 

The first ever positive – and quite providential – critic opinion on his art Van Gogh received from a colleague and acquaintance, the Dutch artist of Jewish origin Joseph Jacob Isaacson ( 1859 -1942) nine months prior to his death. Visiting Paris, Isaacson got to know Theo, and via Theo, he befriended Vincent. Isaacson, who was a deep and well educated person who specialised in Jewish mysticism, realised the merits of Vincent’s art and wrote about it in “The Portfolio” art magazine. “Who is there that conveys, in form and colour, the magnificent, dynamic energy the 19th century is against becoming aware of? I know one man, a lone pioneer, struggling on his own in the depths of darkest night. His name, Vincent, will go down to posterity. There will be more to be said about this heroic Dutchman in the future” – Jewish artist have written.  It is the very first positive art critical mentioning of van Gogh’s art, and a very rare one made during his life-time. 

Joseph Isaacson over-lived once briefly be-friended Vincent for over a half of a century, during which he changed his opinion on Van Gogh’s works, at least publicly so. After Van Gogh’s large exhibition 16 years after his death, and 17 years after his first first so positive and providential critique, Isaacson was not that impressed any longer. Or so he said in his 60-pages  “A new point of view on art’ critic work in which he concludes that although Vincent’s work ‘is impressive, it does not move’ him any longer. It is quite possible that posthumous exploding fame of Van Gogh was somewhat irritating for Isaacson who was the first one to see that Vincent belongs to posterity. 

Joseph Isaacson’s own destiny was as terrible as the destiny of all Jews of Europe who were unfortunate to live to see humanity’s surrender to Nazism. Old artist and his not that old wife were murdered in Auschiwtz in 1942, upon their arrival. Joseph Isaacson was 82 years old at the moment. 

* * * 

Coming back to Fanny Flodin and her husband Juliene Lecrercq whose first name was Joseph, he did for Van Gogh more than any other person except Theo and Johanna Van Goghs. 

Van Gogh’s obituary is the one written by Joseph Juliene Leclercq.

With the help of his wife Fanny and her family’s connections in Scandinavia, Lecrercq organised an important travelling exhibition of Post-Impressionists to Scandinavia, bringing their works, including Van Gogh ones, to Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo as early as in 1898.  A rare and charming portrait of the couple done by  Emile Schuffenecker which now is at the collection of The Johnson Museum of Art at the Cornwell University, was done by the artist in appreciation of Fanny and Julien’s efforts to bring his and his fellow artists work to Scandinavia. Schffenecker who was a close friend of Gaugin, knew Van Gogh well. 

Leclecrq was the person who organised Van Gogh’s first important exhibition ever, the artist’s first retrospective in Paris which consisted of 65 of Van Gogh’s oil paintings and six of his drawings. It was one of the fundamentally important exhibitions in the history of modern art, not only because it brought a sizeable collection of Van Gogh works to wide public for the first time, but also because solely due to that exhibition, several important groups of French artists that developed into the main-stream art of the XX century, such as Fauvists who did include the most important artists of the XX century such as Matisse, Derain, Braque and many others, were inspired by Van Gogh deeply right there and then. 

It was Van Gogh who, eleven years after his death, did influence and actually defined the development of the important and rich  direction of modern art, and that’s why he is known as the father of modernism. That crucial development was originated thanks to the exhibition organised by Julien Lecrecq at the Bernheim-Jeune galleries. 

Juliene Lecrecrq died within a half of a year after that legendary exhibition. But before that, he has bought several Van Gogh’s works from Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, among those was the work which was acquired by Ateneum two years later. Very importantly, it was the very first acquisition of Van Gogh for public collection world-wide. It has to be stated clearly, to clarify the established fact  of the first ever display of Van Gogh’s work which had happened in 1908 for Städel Museum in Frankfurt. 

But display and acquisition are two quite different things. The first ever museum acquisition of Van Gogh in the world had happened for the Finnish Ateneum in March 1903. Ironically enough, in the Ateneum documentation there is a note regarding new acquisitions in which Van Gogh’s work is mentioned as ‘that peculiar Dutch impressionist Van Gogh’ ‘Village Street’ work”. 

Van Gogh’s German Jewish Connection 

It was at that very exhibition in Paris in March 1901, without which the world simply would not know any Vincent Van Gogh, that a wealthy German Jewish art dealer walked in the Bernheim-Jeune Galleries. The Bernheim-Jeune family was of Jewish origin, their input into the development of modern art is quite substantial, and the history of the family and its business under the Nazi occupation during the WWII is painful and tragic. Their role in laying ground for initial understanding and appreciation of Van Gogh as the major artistic genius is crucial. 

The man who was coming from Berlin  in 1901 to see that largely unknown artist with a strangely sounding name at the Bernheim-Jeune Galleries in Paris was Paul Cassirer, the person who basically has made Van Gogh famous and desirable artist first in Europe and then in the USA. Cassirer would be never able to do it unless two factors: the article that he read about Van Gogh and which was the sole reason for him to travel to Paris to seeing that exhibition, and the exhibition itself where Cassirer was smitten by Van Gogh to the depth of his innermost. 

Leopold von Kalckreuth . Portrait of Paul Cassier. 1912. Markisches Museum, Berlin. 

The article that has prompted Paul Cassirer’s initial interest in Van Gogh was published in 1900, shortly before the exhibition in Paris although independently from it. It was written by Julius Meier-Graefe, great German Jewish art historian who lived most of the time in Paris. Meier-Graefe has noted and understood Van Gogh as no one else has done before him, and it is largely thanks to him that reading public in Germany received his deep and brilliant appreciation that has really made Van Gogh known in Europe. 

Lovis Corinth. Portrait of Julius Meyer-Graefe. Musee d’Orsay, Paris.

After publishing his first large essay on why Van Gogh is a great artist, the one which has been read by Paul Cassirer, Meier-Graefe expanded it first into a tiny book, then worked on it more and more, until his books on Van Gogh published in between 1910 and 1929 became the world’s classic. 

It is worth noting that Meier-Graefe who lived until 1935 and who escaped Germany in time, was instrumental with his wife in establishing the art community of German Jewish refugees there and providing hospitality to many of them. 

Paul Cassirer did not live to see the Nazis seizing power in Germany. He died a decade earlier than Meier-Graefe, in 1926, and his death, in a weird way, was quite similar to that of his beloved artist, Van Gogh. Paul Cassirer took his own life , on the emotional grounds, as the result of tormented relations with his wife, and quite like Van Gogh, did not die immediately, but was suffering for two days, just like Van Gogh, before succumbing to his wound. There was quite a parallel in Cassirer’s ending of his own life – in the way Van Gogh did. If to believe that Van Gogh committed suicide, the fact  which has quite substantial reasons to be questioned. 

Paul Cassirer was under a total spell of Van Gogh from the moment he stepped into the Bernheim-Jeune Galleries in Paris in March 1901 at the first retrospective of the artist organised by Josef Julien Lecrercq. His first purchase of five Van Goghs were actually borrowings. These were the first Van Gogh paintings brought by Cassirer to Germany soon after the exhibition he saw in Paris. Very soon after, towards the end of 1901, Paul Cassirer pursued, thanks to his good relations with Johanna Van Vogh-Bonger, about twenty first Van-Gogh paintings from many he would acquire during his 25 years of very energetic efforts of building Van Gogh’s appreciation and fame. Until the moment when WWI had started, Cassier was organising  annual Van Gogh exhibitions in his gallery in Berlin, coming to 14 of them.  Thanks to his leading  and some other people’s efforts, it was Germany, where Van Gogh’s fame had actually evolved, first in Europe and then world-wide. By the start of WWI, German collectors, largely, and some museums, as well, owned as many as 120 oil paintings and 36 drawings of Van Gogh, the master about whom nobody heard a bit over decade back. It was an extraordinary boom which has no precedent in the history of art. 

One has to remember that it all had happened against the background in which the criteria of ‘a good art’ were traditional and imperial ones. The Van Gogh boom in conservative Germany in the first and second decade of the XX century was a truly revolutionary change of a public taste not just in art, but also in further and wider aesthetic context. 

Another twist of irony is not that widely known fact that in the early period of Nazism, from 1933 to 1937, some modernist German artists and the functioners of arts and propaganda at the period who were trying hard to adjust to the Nazi regime in hope to be able to continue their career in Judenfrei Germany, and who identified with anti-Semitic nature of the regime, tried to hijack van Gogh for a short period of time. There were some articles in the pro-modernist art and propaganda publications still allowed by the Hitler regime until 1937, in which their authors were writing that ‘misunderstood and unappreciated by decadent impressionists and post-impressionists in France, van Gogh with his Dutch, and close to German one, upbringing and background, belongs to us, he is German’ ( Kunst der Nation publication, March 1934, cited in Artists Under Hitler by Jonathan Petropoulos, 2014).

Soon after, of course, that inclination was shut down by two factors: in the eyes of pro-Nazi German art circles, French impressionists and post-impressionists were awful and unacceptable due to the fact that they all were dealt and appreciated by the Jews, Jewish art dealers, Jewish art critics, Jewish writers, and Jewish connoisseurs of arts. The second fact of life in Nazi Germany was that from 1937 onward, all pro-modernist tendencies in art, culture and propaganda were shut down completely. It did not prevent a big art consumer, or rather shark Göring to grab the one of the best van Gogh’s works, the one of the two portraits of Dr Gachet, from the piles of the Nazi-stolen art. That particular work has a very dramatic history and is believed to be the one of the five van Gogh’s major works to be destroyed or disappeared during and in connection with the Second World War. 

The combination of brilliant writings  by Julius Meier-Graefe which were captivating mind of German public widely, with actual  top-class elegant and assured, understanding and energetic art dealership by Paul Cassirer has prompted the name of Van Gogh to become famous and his works to be sought after by growing number of art collectors. 

Vincent Van Gogh. Self-Portrait. 1887. Collection Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands. 

The one of such prominent collectors was Helene Muller, who started to collect Van Gogh being introduced to the artist by Paul Cassirer as early as in 1907. Helene Muller was married to prominent Dutch industrialist Anton Kroller, and was guided in further amassing her collection by well-known Dutch art historian and artist Henk Bremmer whom she authorised to buy for her collection practically without restrictions. Bremmer admired Van Gogh, so Muller was lucky to have, as the result, the second largest Van Gogh collection in the world.  This outstanding collection known nowadays as Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands,  has 91 Van Gogh’s oil paintings and 180 of his drawings.

 Another Circle in Never Ending Spiral

In a remarkable meeting of echoes of historical events and deeds of people who lived somewhat a hundred and more years ago, some of the heroes of our story have met again recently, in Helsinki, at the Becoming Van Gogh exhibition at The Didrichsen Art Museum. The only Van Gogh’s painting in Finland  has met at this exhibition with 40 works from the Kroller-Muller Museum in a celebration of the 55th anniversary of the special Finnish art institution. What is more, this exhibition has created the possibility for many people visiting the exhibition during the five months of its display, to resist and to beat the growing pressure of corona realities in our all’ life. 

Art always matters. But in the time of tough pressure and its growing  effect, it is art that enlightens our life. Not to speak of such a catalyst of emotions as the art of Van Gogh. 

The only Van Gogh in Finland has landed there thanks to the widow of the man who first did realise who Van Gogh was in art. The Didrichsen Museum partner in this important exhibition is the museum that has a stunning collection of Van Gogh that had originated and was prompted as the results of  the Berlin Jewish art-dealer’s visit to Paris in March 1901 to see the exhibition which had been organised by the same man whose widow had returned to Finland after his death  a half of year after the exhibition in Paris. 

Maria Didrichsen (C). Becoming Van Gogh exhibition at The Didrichsen Museum of Art. September 2020. Helsinki, Finland. 

71 years after the death of Van Gogh, in 1961, a rather special statue of his was unveiled in Auvers-des-Oise, the first one of several memorials to Van Gogh in France. It was also special because of its author, famous Jewish sculptor Ossip Zadkine ( 1988-1967)  who, being born in Vitebsk, lived and worked in Paris most of his life, from 1910 onward. 

Ossip Zadkine. Vincent Van Gogh. 1961. The first Van Gogh memorial in France. Auvers-sur-Oise. 

Zadkine was fascinated by Van Gogh a big deal. He created at least five Van Gogh’s sculptures, including the one dramatic sculptural double-monument to both Van Gogh brothers in the Dutch town of Zundert, next to the small church which had been memorable and quite important for both brothers, next to the place where they both were born.  That special monument was unveiled in May 1964 by the Queen of the Netherlands Juliana. 

Ossip Zadkine. Monument to Vincent and Theo Van Gogh. Zundert, the Netherlands, 1964. 

Zadkine dedicated  a decade of his life to Van Goghs, from 1955 through 1964. The sculptor has produced so much various creative material during that decade that he was preoccupied with Van Gogh brothers that at the large Zadkine retrospective in early 2010s, the one room was specifically dedicated to display it. 

Ossip Zadkine with a model of his first statue of Van Gogh. 

During the years and decades, there were some more Jewish people who did contribute to Van Gogh’s world-wide fame: some collectors, writers, film-makers, art historians. Among them, were notably, writer Irwing Stone ( Tannebaum)  who authored ever popular Lust for Life novel in mid-1930s, followed by yet more popular film biopic with the same name produced in Hollywood twenty years later, by semi-Jewish great producer John Houseman, and Izzy Danilovich from Belarus shtetl who world knows as Kirk Douglas playing Vincent. 

Very important contribution in what we nowadays know and how we are perceiving Van Gogh was made by great American Jewish art historian Meyer Shapiro from Columbia University who from the 1950s onward was the first one to introduce into the art history the method that is known nowadays as interdisciplinary studies. That pioneering approach that was practised by Shapiro widely has started and had Van Gogh as the main subject of this multifaceted studies. It was also the first time when psychology has become a valid part of art history and art studies. Today, we cannot imagine any qualified art study without this vital component. Meyer Shapiro’s thinking and understanding of Van Gogh has brought it to modern culture in the first place. 

Of course, there are many more people, most of them not Jewish,  from different walks of life and occupations who with their fundamentally important contributions have built the understanding of Van Gogh as the established phenomenon of culture. Actually, understanding is a wrong word. One cannot really understand Van Gogh. Van Gogh is a kind of artist who could be loved, unconditionally and overwhelmingly, or the opposite. 

Theo and Johanna Van Goghs did preserve Vincent’s art and his letters, in their fundamental service to humanity in the XX century. 

But the initial, principal boost that led to Van Gogh’s professional and public appreciation followed by his unparalleled world’s fame, had been created due to the efforts of three Jewish men:  Jewish gallerist ( Alexandre Bernheim-Neuve) , Jewish art historian ( Julius Meier-Graefe) , and Jewish art dealer ( Paul Cassirer).  

All of them were not just liking, or appreciating Van Gogh among the other artists, but loving him deeply in a unique, all-consuming way, the only way to love Van Gogh, thus being motivated and energized by their encompassing love to work for his sake with all their devotion and success, establishing his world-wide fame and appreciation. 

Why did that happen? What is the answer behind this distinct and not cracked yet phenomenon? Yes, all three of them were extremely well educated, and mastered the heights of their professions, with Julius Meier-Greafe being the grandson of Germany’s principal expert on Latin and Greek literature and history, the man who basically laid ground for famed German education in these fields. Broad education and erudition can help to place Van Gogh in the context of culture, but it would not do a trick of understanding him as an artist. Besides, there is no context for Van Gogh in the history of art. I think that Van Gogh could appear at any time and be exactly his own self at any period of art. 

I think it is the paradoxicality of these great Jewish men’s brilliant minds that allowed them to  grasp the genius of Van Gogh. They were so right. There was not and will be no the same artist as Vincent Van Gogh. And our deep Thank You should go to all three of them and to Josef Julien Leclercq who did see and realise the magnetism of the unsolved Van Gogh’s mysteries so early for the sake of us all. 

October – December 2020

(C) Inna Rogatchi. VINCENT: Etudes on Van Gogh special project, Outreach to Humanity series of projects.

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The Inner Dimension – Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh’s Book of Parasha Thoughts

On Marchesvan 28th 5871, which is Sunday November 15th 2020 in the secular calendar, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh will turn 76. We are lucky to live at the time when such a luminary shines on so many of us. Rabbi Yitzchak’s super-modesty in projecting his immense knowledge upon us cannot overcome the fact that, in my deep conviction, he is an unparalleled figure in the modern Jewish world in his massive knowledge, his profound understanding, and his extraordinary talent for elegant clarity in presenting his knowledge and vision.

Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh

Rabbi Yitzhak GinsburghGal Einai Institute.

My husband Michael and I were very privileged to meet with Rav Yitzhak in his house in Kfar Chabad, and I am often in touch with him over many questions of Judaism that appear in my ongoing work and projects.

Rav Yitzhak is the one of the most elegant men I have ever met. It is not easy to bear the knowledge he is blessed to have, but he does so effortlessly. The inner light of the Torah shines out of him in an emphatically quiet, but stunningly beautiful way. In additional to being the supreme authority on Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, Rav Yitzhak is a soulful composer and sublime musician who loves to perform his own melodies and he does it in the way that it stays with you forever once you’ve heard it.

He paints, a fact which is not widely known. He is open to Jewish people of various levels of faith, he has special programs for women, he extends his hand to non-Jewish people who are interested in our faith, tradition and heritage. He has many brilliant students who are authorities in many fields of Jewish knowledge in their own right. He is a wonderful husband and devoted father to his many children and grandchildren. His house shines in that unique quiet glow of modesty, dignity, elegance and loving kindness which is the golden heart of Jewishness and Judaism.

Special Connection

Never in my life had I felt the return to the house of my great-grandfather Meer Chigrinsky and his wife Dinah Paley until we stepped into the house of Rav Yitzhak in Kfar Chabad. The last time I had the very same sensations it was there, in the room left for them to live in after the Bolshevik seizure of power, over half a century ago. It is the light which defines any home, not the number of rooms. The light which defines the house of Rav Ginsburgh in Israel is of the same nature which was the light in the apartment of my great-grandparents in Ukraine.

Thatis not that surprising, actually. Dinah Paley’s brother Sergey Shraga Paley was the person who ensured the work position for Rav Levi Schneerson, the father of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, in Ekaterinoslav in the beginning of the XX century. Shraga’s daughter, my great-aunt Esther married Menachem Ussishkin, and the couple lived in the Shraga’s house for their first ten years of marriage before they emigrated to Palestine. My great grandfather Meer, the nephew of Abram Chigrinsky, the treasurer of the giant Ekaterinoslav Jewish community, together with Rebbe’s father Rabbi Levi, saved that entire community from famine in a specially elaborated scheme.

Rabbi Ginsburgh, in his turn, is the one of the most brilliant students of the Rebbe, who had encouraged him to publish his teaching lessons in the form of the book back in 1980 when Rav Yitzhak was 35 years old. The Rebbe was known to be extremely foresighted. He saw the rare qualities of Rav Yitzchak quite early. With his encouragement and his blessing, during the following forty years until this day, Rabbi Ginsburgh has authored a stunning number of over 100 books in Hebrew, English, French, Spanish and Russian. His books explore the fields of knowledge which span science, physics and math in particular, in addition to psychology, health, Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah, marital relations and family, and on to politics and leadership. Rabbi Ginsburgh never repeats himself which is a quality of a super-brain. But this super-brain alone would never go into the innermost hearts of his readers, as it always does, without the fine and delicate, but very strong soul which speaks out in the voice and thoughts of Rav Yitzchak to all of us.

The Inner Dimension

Rabbi Ginsburgh’s newest book is The Inner Dimension, Insights into the weekly Torah Portion. Rav Yitzchak’s commentaries on the weekly parashot, his essays, are based on many of his public teachings on the corresponding portions of the Torah at Kfar Chabad, Jerusalem, Safed, Ramat Aviv, Beitar, Elon Moreh, Afulah, Upper Nazareth, Arad, Karnei Shomron, and Tel Aviv during the previous 13 years, and partially on several of his previous books in Hebrew with some of the articles featured on Arutz Sheva. It tells us, knowing the steady massive productivity of Rav Yitzchak, that he and his colleagues who worked on this book for a long time, have chosen the choicest parts of his wisdom. The book is exceptionally edited in masterly fashion by Rachel Gordon.Cover The Inner DimensionDr. Rogatchi

In the sense of the character of the knowledge brought out in these 54 chapters on 54 parashot, the book is very balanced . The narrative is neither too dry or too light, not too scientific and not too story-telling. In a very harmonious way, it provides the reader with an explanation of the essence of the phenomena occurring in every Parasha. Rabbi Ginsburgh has decided to focus not on the plots or character traits, but on the phenomena appearing and defining every parasha, thus enlightening us with a deeper understanding of what the Torah means to tell us while telling of certain characters and episodes. This is insight into insight.

In its overall tone, the book reminds me of a very important conversation with an esteemed Rabbi who is organically kind and is so wise in his heart that he does not project himself, but sees with the eyes of those to whom he is talking.

The tone of this book is perfect, when you read it, you are as if accompanied with a special quiet light.

Like many of us, I have read numerous commentaries to the Torah, many of them with brilliant thoughts, interesting insights, new parables. You can be knocked down by the mighty knowledge of the great Ari in what his brilliant and devoted pupil Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote down. You can be enlightened by the brilliance of the Maharal and be engaged by his demanding mind. You can be completely gripped by a colossal work and its great result in the Baal HaTurim’s unique commentary.

But I never manage to read the commentaries to the Torah each week except for Rashi, which provides you with this shimmering light that stays with you, importantly, from the moment you close the book, to the next moment when you open it again.

In his book, Rav Yitzchak brings parallels to the current life in Israel in his insights on the Torah weekly portions, and in it, this commentary brings Jewish Law into the midst of our day. Many of those who read it, would think again, and again, and will see the events of the present day, its tendencies, its genesis, in the context, as a moral constant for mindful believing conscientious Jew – and this is exactly why the Rebbe instructed young Rabbi Yitzhak to publish his classes in the form of books. Rebbe knew precisely whom he was tasking, why, and what for.

Watch: as Rabbi Ginsburgh sings the Alter Rebbe’s E-li Atah melody at the special event in Shilo on the Sukkoth 5780 (October 2019):

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Der Vasser-Treger on Orphaned Street of Vilna

Memory Stones series 

Never Again what?  

There are two schools of thinking on the matter of the way of commemoration of our tragic Jewish past in the parts of the world where Jewish life has been eradicated during Holocaust so efficiently. According to one school, everything ruined should be restored, for the sake of historical fairness if not for any other sake. The representatives of the  other school are more pragmatic and they are asking: who will be praying in those restored giant synagogues? Is it good and proper if they will be staying empty? 

I can see the points in both opinions, actually. Normal human logic prescribes to restore the objects which were destroyed. But normal human logic also wonders on who will be going there. The fact is that that unspeakable sadness which has become the overwhelming, ever-lasting constant after the Shoah is still in effect, 75 years on, three generations after the end of the Second World War. Will it ever go away? No, it will not. Such is the character of the crime committed against the Jews in Europe. Michael Rogatchi (C). Shtetl Memories IV. Homage to Devilspiel novel by Grigory Kanovich. Mixed technique. 50 x 40 cm. 2020.

In those places which were not made if not entirely Judenfrei, but quite close to that, the vicious goal has been almost achieved to the chilling effect, with the consequences palpable to this day. Eradication of Judaism in the vast part of Europe has been successful to a stunning proportion. 

This change is qualitative. It has to be admitted and understood as it is. Without these irrelevant ‘never again’ chants. Never again what? It is never again already: never again Volozhin, Mir and all this myriad of great yeshivas will be teaching Jewish boys in Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, and all the places where they were flourishing. Never again there won’t be charming self-sufficient life streams in all thousands of shtetls all Eastern and Central Europe however modernised it all could be with time. Never again hundreds of Jewish professors will be teaching thousands of students all over in Poland, Germany, France and any other places. Never again Jewish musicians will bring that brilliance to their home countries all over Europe. Never again millions of Jewish people, substantially more than six million, will be living all over the places they lived during centuries enormously and indisputably enriching European economy, trade, science, industry, culture, everything. It. Will. Never. Happen. Again. Period. 

So, how to commemorate the life and the people which had been destroyed in all this unspeakable cruelty with all this barbarian enthusiasm? 

Der Vaser-Treger on the Vilna street  

On Monday, October 19th, 2020, a new sculpture was unveiled right on the street of Vilnius. The place is  the corner of  Lidos and Kedainiu streets, the one of the entrances into the Vilnius Jewish ghetto. Some people with whom I am speaking today, are calling it, fully organically for themselves, ‘former Jewish ghetto’. I understand what they mean. For me, the Vilna Jewish ghetto, as any other our ghetto anywhere in the world,  is always in present tense. I just feel like that. But there are some ghettos in which the air is an open wound. Vilna ghetto is just like that, for me, my husband and some of our friends. Romualdas Kvintas (C). The Water-Carrier. Bronze. 2010. Unveiled in Vilnius on October 19, 2020. Courtesy: Egle Kvintiene. With kind permission of Egle Kvintiene.

So, the  street has its new street-walker, the one casted in bronze, of a human figure size. His face is beautiful. He looks up. Many of us do. And did, always. Such a habit.  The shape of his figure brings us a hundred years back, at very least. There is a well-known photograph of a similar figure, alive man, from a Vilna street taken in 1922. The minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, a known friend of Israel, Linas Linkevičius, has referred to that picture in his tweet about the recent event. There is another similar picture from Vilna taken five years earlier in 1917, which exists on the archival postcard in the collection at Beit Hatfutsot, The Museum of Jewish People in Tel-Aviv. Archive photo of water-carrier from Vilnius. 1922. Courtesy: The Library of Congress, the USA. No reproduction restrictions.

In a nice ceremony organised by the City of Vilnius and Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius, and supported by the Embassies of the Netherlands and Germany, gathered 30 people, the maximum permitted by the corona restrictions. The ceremony commemorated the second anniversary of the death of the author of that soulful sculpture, The Water Carrier, Der Vaser-Treger in Yiddish, Romas Kvintas, the outstanding Lithuanian sculptor who passed away so tragically and so early in October 2018. I have written about Romas and his input into the our commemoration process before, just after his death, in connection with his sculpture of Leonard Cohen which is also on the street of Vilnius. 

Romualdas Kvintas and his Way of Memory

In a paradoxical phenomenon, due to the number of reasons, the outside world beyond culturally sophisticated and advanced, but laconic behaviourally countries, such as Lithuania or Czech Republic, do not necessarily know enough about big artists and cultural figures there, as it ought to. Romualdas Kvintas, or Romas as he was  known to his family and friends, is one of those artists. He is widely known and appreciated in Lithuania, but not that much outside it as he should have been.  

There are millions of tourists who are coming to Vilnius annually, all of them are seeing Romas’ sculptures in bronze all over the city, and the same is the case outside Vilnius, all over Lithuania. Kvintas was a Master: top professional who worked very fast, but always  in a great fashion, a deep person, soulful thinker, he produced his sculptures with love and understanding. Rare love and rare understanding. His works are the rare case when a bronze and stone figures communicates with a viewer in a special way and conveys palpable emotions. Sculptor Romualdas Kvintas ( 953- 2018). Courtesy: (C) Egle Kvintiene. With kind permission of Egle Kvintiene.

Kvintas knew precisely not only what and whom he was sculpting , but also why. His tributes to the leading Jewish figures of Lithuania, which are – importantly – are also the leading figures in the entire Jewish heritage, are works of love, and for that, our appreciation of Romas Kvintas’ contribution in the process of living memory will last forever. 

In the case of The Water Carrier, Der Vaser-Treger, the story which was told to me by Romas’ widow Egle Kvintiene tells that Kvintas was working on a big project which included possible numerous sculptures, bas-relieves, and other possible sculpting creations which would be placed all over the territory of the former Jewish ghetto of Vilnius, as a sign of commemoration to the people and culture which had been whipped off from the Jerusalem of the North for good. 

‘Romas has finished the 3D model of this Water Carrier ten years ago, in 2010, and then, sadly, there was not enough interest to place the sculpture. There were various ideas regarding the suitable place, but it ended nowhere at the time. But now, fortunately, it is not just placed in the ( Vilnius) down-town, it stands at the place which was the one of the entrances of the  ( Jewish ) ghetto. You cannot make it more symbolic”, – Egle has told me. Indeed. 

Lasting Gift of Friendship

It was largely thanks to two notable personalities in Lithuanian culture, both close friends of Romualdas Kvintas that his charming, warm, evocative Der Vasser-Treger had been erected on the Vilnius street now, ten years after its creation and two years after its creator’s death. Romas’ widow Egle has told me with warm gratitude that former long-term principal of the Vilnius Academy of Arts Audrius Klimas  and well-known Lithuanian architect Alvidas Songlaila had put forceful effort in order to make the Water-Carrier standing in the street of the former Ghetto in Vilnius. 

The one of the leading Lithuanian designers, professor Audris Klimas himself has navigated me through the details of the story behind the erection of this new sculpture in Vilnius: it has to be finished, casted in bronze ( a very good work has been done by Martynas Gaubas and Rimantas Keturka ), and importantly, a prominent and suitable place has to be found, with getting all the necessary permissions and funding. “ Fortunately, we in Vilnius, as in many European capitals,  do have a special ongoing program for public art, and this is within this program that the City of Vilnius decided in support of our application of The Water Carrier project” – professor Klimas has told me. Good for the City of Vilnius and for its Mayor Remigijus Simasius who decided this way and who is consistent in  his policy in this regard. Ceremony of unveiling The Water Carrier sculpture in Vilnius. 19 October 2022. Photo : (C) Saulius Ziura. With kind permission of The Water Carrier project, Lithuania.

I personally would like to see more decisions like that in so many European cities which do have this program, and which do have so many reasons for statues like that, from Barcelona to Prague and from Paris to Krakow, but so far, we haven’t to see this kind of sculptures on the streets of those and so many other cities. So many others.   

Unveiled on the sad second anniversary of Romas Kvintas’ passing, his Water-Carrier stands now just next to a new stylish building resolved in the style of the historical epoch of the architecture of Vilnius downtown.  The building is authored by another close friend of Kvintas, known Lithuanian architect Alvidas Songaila. I was  told that Romas used to work with his architect friend closely in anything regarding many architectural decisions for his sculptures, during many years. 

I am thinking of that so special gift of friendship. What would we all do without it, without our friends? In the case of truly important for Vilnius work of Lithuania’s best sculptor, it is solely thanks to the love, memory and devotion of his friends  that his memory has been honoured in the way which has become a cultural and historical lasting commemoration. 

Inspiration In Parallel Worlds – and Time

Kvintas’s widow and his friends did share with me the background and source of inspiration for Romas while he was working on his Vaser-Treger. “ Romas got the inspiration for his sculpture from that famous Moyshe Kulbak’s  poem, Vilno”, – tells Egle. “ Yes, it was exactly from that canonic Kulbak’s poem that the personage for this sculpture came to Romas’ mind’ , – mentioned also prof. Klimas.

More precisely, Kulbak’s image comes from these lines that back in 1926 he dedicated to the city he loved:

You are a dark amulet set in Lithuania

Old grey writing – mossy, peeling.

Each stone a book; parchment every wall.

Pages turn, secretly open in the night,

As, on the old synagogue, a frozen water carrier,

Small beard tilted, stands counting the stars.

At the earlier stage of this special project, it was discussed a possibility to engrave the quote from Kulbak’s poem on the sculpture’s initially planned base under the figure in eight languages. Now, the Water-Carrier ‘walks’ straight on the street, so there is no basement, but anyone can read the whole story about the sculpture, its author, Kulbak and his poem in an efficient way of sharing QR-code on a smartphone from a wall nearby the sculpture.  

Moyshe Kulbak is the one of the leading names in the group of superbly talented Litvak poets, writers, artists and musicians from the first third of the XX century. He was the star even in such a star-made group, and his Vilno poem, the source of Romas Kvintas idea and inspiration for his Der Vasser-Treger, has become a canonic one, far beyond the circles of Yiddish and Jewish cultures. Poet Moyshe Kulbak ( 1896 – 1937). Open Sources Archive, The Water-Carrier Project.

After torturous interrogations, along with more than 20 other Jewish writers Moyshe Kulbak was murdered by the NKVD in Minsk on 29th October 1937. Almost all his family perished tragically in the Minsk ghetto a few years later. His wife was a prisoner of Gulag for over 10 years, and his youngest daughter Raya who was found by Kulbak’s survived brother after the Second World War in one of the orphanages in Soviet Union, is living with her family in Israel nowadays. 

There has been the most interesting twist of synchronised inspiration that has occurred with regard to this symbolic Der Vaser-Treger figure almost a century ago. Looking into some historical material, I found the poster of the performance played at the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York 86 years ago, in December 1936.  Poster for Der Vaser-Treger play performance at the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York, December 1936. Courtesy (C) American Jewish Historical Society. Permitted for reproductions in cultural and educational publications.

The play which is Der Vasser Trager, had the Water Carrier as its central personage, and there were even Lithuanian personages in it, like  Jewish merchant from Lithuania and some others. The author of the play was  Jacob Prager who lived before the Second World War  in Warsaw, in close proximity to Vilnius. According to my research supported by some YIVO documentation, Prager was known for  creating some of characters in his plays from the poems popular at the time. 

As Moyshe Kulbak wrote his Vilno poem ten years before the Prager’s play was performed  in New York, and as he was a cult figure among Yiddish intelligentsia both in Lithuania and Poland, Prager definitely knew that poem well. My guess is that his Der Vaser-Tregger theatrical hit in the mid-1930s in New York with the main character of Simcha Vaser-Treger was quite likely inspired by Kulbak’s poem, as well, the same as Romas Kvintas sculpture 80 years later. And what a painful irony turned it out to be the Water-Carrier’s name in the play. Simcha means joy in Hebrew, and it was very popular given name among our people always, before the Shoah yet more so. 

One of my great uncles, a renowned doctor, was Simcha too. He survived by hiding in France, but his son, also a doctor, as his father, did not. Simcha’s son Alexander who escaped just after the occupation from France to Switzerland in an extremely daring escape and who tirelessly treated his brethren in the DPC in northern Italy, was infected by typhus and died aged 29.

The resemblance of the Water-Carrier on the Yiddish Art Theatre poster of 1936 and the bronze sculpture on the street in Vilnius today is remarkable. Yet, Romas Kvintas never saw it. We all, Kvintas’ widow and his friends, and I and my husband  just love the fact of this incredible spiral of creative inspiration and humanity that whirled  around the globe and time in this special Water-Carrier small figure. 

Enlightening Memory and the Drama of an Orphaned Street

The first reaction that I have heard to the appearance of a bronze Jewish Der Vaser-Treger on the Vilna street from the residents of the city was from a 40-something IT-manager, who is not Jewish. He lives in the house on the street with a sculpture. This modern Lithuanian man has said: “ I am glad that every day I will be going to work and to return home walking next to this figure of that water-carrier. I am glad because the figure and everything that is behind it does remind us about the Vilnius where we all have come from. And this is enlightening memory”.  I was glad to see such a normal human reaction. 

Of course, I am fully aware of the situation regarding the ongoing struggle around recognition of guilt with regard to the local collaborators of the Nazis in Lithuania.  I know about the continuing efforts of those who strive to revise the factual history of the Shoah in Lithuania – and many other European countries – to insist that some of the collaborators should be regarded as national heroes by Lithuania. 

I know about smashed memorials to the victims of the Holocaust and about flowers and candles next to the outrageous memorial desks to the people who would be justly treated as military criminals in Germany and many other countries. I am in Lithuania often and am following the situation there closely. My and my husband’s families are Litvaks. We do care. 

Very much as in the case with the sculpture in the Vilna street, my thought was that there are so many European countries that had had all the reasons in the world to name the one of years to honour their noble Jewish sons and daughters, and to mint some memorable collectible coins as  so well deserved by never delivered tribute to their memories , from  to , and from to. 

The erection of the Jewish symbolic figure in the centre of Vilnius has revived the conversation about the topic which is still hot in Lithuania today. Some people, again, not Jewish ones,  have observed with this regard: “ Despite all those memorial plaques, at the Holocaust spots including ( like in Paneriai forest) , we still cannot admit our guilt. We just need conscience and courage to do that, but we still lack it”. 

What is important here is that those are reactions and thoughts of ordinary people, not politicians, not public figures. It is the reactions of these people which always tells about the real ‘temperature’ and conditions of a given society. 

There are also those from Lithuanian public today who have mentioned with regard to the Water-Carrier: “It is the message for those who want and who can understand”. Exactly so. At the unveiling ceremony of Romualdas Kvintas’ The Water Carrier sculpture. Photo: (C) Saulius Ziura. With kind permission of The Water-Carrier Project.

From that perspective, the words of Bonnie Horbach , the Ambassador of the Netherlands in Lithuania who was actively and kindly supporting the Water-Carrier project, the words that she said at the opening ceremony in Vilnius are the words of so natural human attitude:

“We all share the history of what happened here in the Second World War, and we all have a responsibility to investigate that history, even when it’s uncomfortable. Because it’s only then that we can understand what happened at that time. The statue of the Water Carrier is a constant reminder of the promise we made to acknowledge the inconvenient truth to ensure such a history will not repeat itself” ( Ambassador Bonnie Horbach, Opening remark at the Water-Carrier sculpture unveiling ceremony, Vilnius, Lithuania, October 19, 2020). 

Elie Wiesel’s one of the most often used phrases in his both speeches and writings was ‘and yet, and yet’.  This phrase said in Elie’s voice so many times still sounds in my head. When the subjects were those which dear Elie had to cover for over 70 years – just imagine – there always were ‘and yet, and yet’, and more of ‘and yets’. 

Remembering our dearest friend, and especially at the times when I deal with this ever present in our conscience – and sub-conscience – theme of my annihilated people, I am saying Elie’s  ‘and yet’  again when thinking on Vilna Street and its new inhabitant, the Water-Carrier, Der Vaser-Treger, Jewish man named Simcha, with all that piercing irony in that naming just before the WII that one just cannot invent. 

And yet, a few days after unveiling the sculpture, I received  another photo of it from my Lithuanian friends. Arunas Kuliskausjas (C). Yesterday in Vilnius. 2020. With kind permission of the author.

One of international Litvaks, dear friend, reacted in the way that resonates with every single Litvak world-wide, I am positive on that: “ Where are you, Jews? I brought some water for Shabbes dinner…”. 

The original capture of the work by its author, known Lithuanian photographer Arunas Kulikauskas, says it all, to me. It is simple: “Yesterday in Vilnius”. 

All the years after the extermination of the Lithuanian Jewry, the streets of Vilna were depressingly, very sadly blank-empty, despite any number of people walking there, for the Jews who remained. It was always the case, all the years from 1945 onward. There is such sadness from a dust of memories on the walls, in the air, under your feet, such a tangible  heart-ache  when you are walking there and looking into the inner court-yards, such helplessness, such never going away pain. This is the Jewish Vilna legacy after the Shoah,  permanently so.  

This sepia photo portrays it exactly. Before, until October 19th, 2020, these streets with its street lights were completely orphaned for us, Jews. They were orphaned for 75 years. From now on, at least our Simcha , Der Vaser-Treger is there, standing for all of us. More far more importantly, for all of them. 

Aciu, dearest Romas for thinking of us and making your Water Carrier as real, as one can make real a soul in bronze. Aciu, dear Audrius, Alvidas, Remigijus and all those who did help Romas’ Water Carrier to stand up there now, to make this street of Vilna a bit less orphaned. Just a bit.

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Clouded sun and comfort out of love

Gentle Jewish Giant, the Pride of Israel: Farewell to Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

It promised to be a sunny day, August 7th, 2020, Av 17th 5780. All forecasts were unanimous on cloudless sunny weather in the southern part of Finland where we live.  And it was like that entire morning, until 11 am. Then a darkness surprised us, no rain, a slight whisper-like wind, with thick clouds all over the horizon all of a sudden. I knew that something serious happened. 

At 11.02 we learned about the passing of Rabbi Steinsaltz in Jerusalem. Just a day before that, being aware of Rav Adin’s sharply declined health, with my husband Michael, his ever devotee, praying for his health all that critical time, I thought that if that awful thing would happen, G-d forbid, in the case of Rabbi Adin, it should happen on Erev Shabbat. I cannot explain how my thoughts worked. It was nothing deliberate. It was like a visiting thought, a cloud brought by a wind, came directly to my mind and declared itself. It does not happen often,  I must say. Rav Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz. Courtesy: Steinsaltz Centre.

With a person like Rabbi Steinsaltz, it just cannot be otherwise, I thought at the moment. And now we learned with such a sadness that it has happened this Erev Shabbat. The Creator looked after Rabbi Adin’s soul with care and love. For a Jewish person, to depart on Erev Shabbat is a very special sign of the Creator’s love.  And Rav Adin was a true luminary of our times, our quiet giant, the pride of Israel.

There are very few people in history in general, Jewish or not, who have made a similar impact on millions all over the globe, and there are very few people who have contributed in a similar way serving humanity as Rabbi Steinzaltz did.

It is a privilege to be a contemporary of such a giant. And it is a deep  and painful sadness to see him leaving us. Actually, with all his books and teaching he has left us with, he cannot possibly leave us. People like that preserves, and Rabbi Adin, Even-Israel, did preserve a lot of light indeed, and spread it generously. Millions know what they know largely because and thanks to him. His is an outstanding legacy.

In another symbolic development, Rabbi Adin also passed away just three weeks after his 83d birthday, which is the time of the Jewish man’s second bar Mitzvah, what is known as re-bar Mitzvah, symbolic second bar-Mitzvah for a Jewish man after his 70th birthday, the age in which King David has left this world. Another beautiful symbolism for a great Rabbi, a universal Jewish Teacher who did spread the light  and explained the wisdom of the Torah to an enormous amount of people world-wide. After Rabbi Adin’s serious stroke which occurred in 2016, it was another grace provided to him from Above. And it is so fitting to the sage of our time who loved symbolism and understood its beauty. 

His Guide to Jewish Prayer ( 1994) is with my husband Michael since the day of its publication, 26 years by now. And Michael still gets to this dear book for him so very often all these years, more than a quarter of a century. He has a special bond with it, it is like speaking with one’s teacher. And Michael regards Rabbi Adin as his Teacher. His bookshelves are full of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s books, as shelves of so many of us. His photograph is on the Michael’s study wall, along with several dear friends Rabbis, and I know that it is very important for Michael to have it there, so close to him. Michael Rogatchi (C). Eretz Israel. Journey in Time. Pen on cotton paper. 40 x 50 cm. 2016. Homage to Rav Adin Steinsaltz.

I will never forget the joy that overwhelmed me when my mom, who had no privilege of learning Judaism as she would like to, in her early and mid-life, was completely taken by Rav Adin’s The Thirteen Petalled Rose, his indisputable classic when she was able to read it in her senior years. “I’ve got it, I’ve got it! Oh, how beautiful it is, how clear, how interesting!” – she was exclaiming, stroking the small elegant edition of the Rose with a child’s enthusiasm and an elder’s  gratitude at the same time. I thought: “Toda Raba, Rav Adin!”, and I still feel that gratitude ever since. 

Some of Rav Adin’s teaching have inspired me in my own search, intellectual, spiritual and artistic, too.Inna Rogatchi (C). The Thirteen Petalled Rose. Homage to Rav Adin Steinsaltz. The Garment of the Moon series. Lapice pastel, crayons Luminance on authored original archival print on white cotton paper. 30 x 40 cm. 2020.

I know that it was the case for so many millions world-wide. 

I also know that Rabbi Adin in his giant Talmud project’s undertaking had unified so many people who had become colleagues and friends, including several of our own colleagues and friends,  working on this extraordinary project in so many countries, from Russia to Italy and back.  It is another great side of Rav Adin’s legacy, to create a world-wide community of his students and followers who speak the same language, share the similar values and are close to each other even not necessarily being personally known each to other. This is what educated humanity is to me. 

I find it not coincidental that the Talmud parts which were studied in two days preceding Rav Adin’s passing dealt with the sad matters of us leaving this world. Another telling symbol connected with this great man’s leaving us. 

His funeral was very special too. That beautiful singing around, this dignity of the family, not surprisingly but very assuredly, that warmth emanating from everyone of so  many people present. So many young ones around, very importantly. So much light in encompassing sorrow. All that love in its embracing comforting way.

It was an extraordinary farewell to a quiet giant, the Teacher for so many of us. It was the only possible way to say ‘good-bye’ to the man who will be with many of us forever, literally so. 

The inexplicable clouds which darkened the horizon in the place where we live, gave its way to the sun to return at the time when the ceremony of farewell with Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz had started in Jerusalem, just before 2 pm. It was shining, as it was forecasted, ever since all the time of that so special, so reflective Erev Shabbat. Inna Rogatchi (C). Clouded View. Watercolour, crayons Luminance on authored original archival print on cotton paper. 30 x 40 cm. 2020.

 Baruch Dayan Emet, dear Rabbi Adin. Love and support to big and good Steinzalt’s family.

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ADDIO, MAESTRO: TRIBUTE TO ENNIO MORRICONE

ADDIO, MAESTRO. IN MEMORIAM: ENNIO MORRICONE

Windy Morning

On July 6th, 2020 morning, I woke up at 5.21 am, almost three hours before my usual awakening. There was no reason for that, I thought at the moment. We still have a white nights at this time in Finland, so the sun was up for an hour or so. The air was completely clear, but without that special morning serenity. I heard noisy and persistent rustling of branches all around our house, non-stop rustling. The wind was mighty, the weather was stormy. Strange morning, I thought, not quite July-like. I felt like the wind was as if saying something. Not trying to say, but saying in articulated way. I could not sleep back at all.  

Some music was still whirling in my head from the previous night when my husband and I were listening to our usual pre-bed concert. Yesterday, we opted for the record of a great concert given back in 2006 by two outstanding Italian musicians, trumpet player Paolo Fresu and pianist Danilo Rea at Auditorium di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Fresu and Rea were improvising playing some of our favourite music by great Ennio Morricone, a very special person for us both.

We started to speak about Maestro Ennio, how is he doing, hopefully now everything is fine, after our all’ fears for him and his wife because of severe epidemic of Covid-19 in Italy recently, how much we are waiting for his book sent to us by his family, what a great music that great man have created, and so on. Our evening of July  5th 2020 was ending with our thoughts on Ennio Morricone.  

In a couple of hours after my unusual awakening next morning, my Inbox did show the terrible news: Maestro Morricone passed away this morning, at the dawn in Rome ( 5.42 am), at hospital there. The same time when I awoke that morning, under noisy rustlings of the trees in our garden. 

Maestro Ennio Morricone. With thank you to Morricone family. Courtesy: Morricone Foundation.

Just four months ago, in mid-February 2020, we were seeing Maestro’s son Marco, the one of his four children, and his wife Monica in Rome where we all were participating  together at the  Il Volo di Pegaso Italian National Arts, Literature and Music Award ceremony in which the Maestro Morricone’s Armonica Onlus Academy was taking a prominent part, and our The Rogatchi Foundation is traditionally participating as well. When Marco Morricone was invited to the stage to speak before awarding some of the laureates, we were stunned by his goodness, his modesty and his sensitivity. We should not be stunned, actually: Marco is so much the son of his great father in that great modesty, that rare and organic attitude towards people, that fineness of sublime soul. 

Sea of Light 

I saw Maestro Morricone in person for the first time  in the end of August of 2009 in Rimini, during the important Meeting di Rimini high-end cultural and humanitarian festival. Maestro was giving a special concert in an unusual concert-conversation format. I was invited as a special guest, as well as another dear friend, the great public figure, late Harry Wu. We all were staying at the same historical Rimini Grand Hotel, famous largely thanks to Fellini who had a special bond to the place, who immortalised it in his films and  who actually died there. 

Both Maestro Morricone and his wife were gracious, elegant, organically polite and friendly disposed toward people they were meeting at Rimini Festival, but not only. To talk with them, to be near them was like one was entering the sea of light. Very calm, serene sea which is organically generous with you – and you, and you, everyone – in sharing its light, in wrapping it around you absolutely effortlessly. 

Luckily, I have met many special people in my life. And many very special ones among them. But I never met anyone quite like Ennio Morricone. That man had such extraordinary substance which he consciously and very graciously  kept very much inside himself that his presence was a quiet but very deep celebration and a gift. Never in my life did I have that sensation when a brief friendly encounter lasts over many years and is present in one’s life in a sustaining and tangible way as if it had happened just yesterday. 

I remember the Maestro’s face, his smile, his attentive eyes, very sharp eyes but without any edge in his outlook, his wise and elegant words very vividly during all twelve years that have passed since our personal meeting. I cannot explain it, but it is with me on a daily basis. I treat it as a very special personal gift in my life. I always will. 

Inna Rogatchi with Michael Rogatchi (C). Rome Blues. Homage to Ennio Morricone. Amarcord Forever original series. 2012.

As a culture figure, Ennio Morricone was a gift to mankind: his enormous productivity and fortunately long life ensured his music to over 500 films, many of them mile-stones of cinematography, and much more great music by that brilliant composer. I do not know any other cultural figure whose impact was so mighty, unexpected, wide and universal. Not only Morricone’s music is great, but to very large extent, it did made the films for which he was composing, unforgettable and distinct ones, from all eight classical Westerns by Sergio Leone to Once Upon the Time in America, Sicilian Clan, Cinema Paradiso, and so many others. 

Morricone’s scores for all those exceptional films always was much more than a score, even the best one. It was a vision laid not in words, not in pictures, but in music, in melodies. Because of philosophical depth and the beauty of Morricone’s music, this vision has been perceived universally, by millions. Because of its pure harmony and depth, that vision has enriched our individual perception of the world and it has enriched our own lives. Morricone’s music is an unique phenomenon in the history of culture, and palpably so in modern cultural history. This music is more than words. It is deeper than words. And it stays longer than images on the screen although they all are engraved in our memory very much because and thanks to that so unique, so special and so original music.

Ennio Morricone was a gift to mankind. 

Not only was his productivity simply phenomenal, but his artistic responsibility was exemplary one.  Maestro Morricone started to conduct his own music quite late, in the mid-1980s when he was 56 year old. His concerts were always a great success. During those concerts, the sea of light that he did emanate was transformed into the ocean of it. The waves of goodness were embarrassing Morricone’s huge audiences at every concert he ever gave, and those were many in major places and different corners of the world. He was very generous towards the people in anything he did. It was his principle of life conduct. Amazingly, he gave fantastic concerts conducting brilliantly as recently, as just two years ago, in 2018, being 89. 

True Renaissance Man

In the best of Italian modes, Maestro Morricone was a true Renaissance man. Additionally to his inherited and developed musical supreme talent, he had a brilliant mind and great intellect. After learning about Morricone in more detail, I realised why his music is so unique and so universal. It is because it was also a product of his might intellect and outcome of his deep spirituality. 

Maestro Morricone was an exceedingly modest person, he never bragged on his brilliance and depth. But  it all is in his book, Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words, which is a sheer intellectual pleasure to read. It is the one of the best books ever.

Inna Rogatchi with Michael Rogatchi (C). Don Quixote’s Echo. Homage to Ettore Scola and Ennio Morricone. Amarcord Forever. Original art series. 2012.

When I was reading the parts of it, I was having an impression that Leonardo had returned to our midst, this time as a composer. “Music is mysterious, – wrote Maestro in his incredibly engaging book, – it does not offer many answers”. Indeed, Ennio Morricone’s music did originate much more lasting questions for millions of people than all those great films itself. And questions are the salt and beauty of a life landscape, the more, the better. 

As a person, Maestro Morricone was simply amazing in his modesty, his friendliness, his kind attitude towards the people. I wish we would have much more people like him, but the reality is that he was a rare sapphire of a man.

His deep faith was never shaken and for those who knew him and the family, it was evident that this kind of faith was a very firm ground for his outstanding and far reaching humanity. 

His and his family’s generosity and philanthropy maybe not that well-known widely – precisely because of supreme modesty of Morricones – but there was, is and will be steady stream of it in many directions of life, including their help to children, families in need, musical education, science, medicine, you name it.

When we at our The Rogatchi Foundation have started the Culture for Humanity global initiative facilitating cultural support to people world-wide at the smashing time of Covid-19 pandemic, it was Maestro Morricone and his wonderful family who did respond the first ones to join and to lead the effort. We were touched and grateful to those wonderful people who always share their talent and their heart with this simplicity and understatement, in the way the real giants do. 

As we all know, because of a number of reasons, some of great masters of arts can be quite complicated characters. Ennio Morricone, additionally to all his extraordinary professional qualities, was simply a wonderful man. True humanitarian whose humanism was an organic part of his nature. He is a giant in all and every sense. 

It would take time for me to write about Maestro Ennio in the past term.  Such light like his never dims. 

Addio, Maestro, e senza fondo grazie, bottomless thank you. 

July 6th, 2020.

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Roses of Shavuot: Wisdom as Beauty

After forty nine days of counting the Omer which also means an annual inner preparation for Shavuot, giving us the moral code, we are about to enter the celebration of getting wisdom. 

Preparing for the celebration, we at The Rogatchi Foundation thought to engage people from some communities world-wide, our partners and friends in Estonia, London and the United States, with a mini Shavuot quiz. We wanted it to keep it interesting and that’s why we elaborated the question on the subject which had not been in discussion much. We also wanted to keep it simple, and thus concentrated on just one episode and one person. The person was Elkanah, the father of prophet Samuel.Michael Rogatchi (C). Eretz Israel. Journey in Time I. Pencil on white cotton paper. 30 x 40 cm. 2016. The Rogatchi Art collection.

Elkanah, who was blessed to father such a giant as Samuel because of something special, is the figure which is not discussed much  in the existing Biblical sources. His merit which led him to father such an essential figure as Samuel was Elkanah’s personal effort to make the three pilgrimages to the Mishkan in Shiloh as the established and wide tradition among the Jews his contemporaries. 

Elkanah had a vision, understanding, will and devotion to the Creator to put serious conscious spiritual, practical and financial effort to spread the important tradition among his fellow Jews in many places on the way of his and his extended family’s pilgrimages three times a year annually, every year going by the different route to engage more people from different places.  

What’s more, it is established knowledge in Judaism based on the Talmud Yerushalaim that Elkanah went to Shiloh annually not just three, but four times. How come? What do we know about it? 

The corresponding phrase in the Talmud Yerushalaim is the following one:  “And the man [Elkanah] would ascend from his city, as was his custom, to bow down and bring sacrifices to the God of Hosts in Shiloh” (1 Samuel 1:3). He went from time to time to fulfil his vows and bring sacrifices at the Tabernacle”. 

Until now, it was not established in the existing Biblical commentaries on how the sages learned from that verse in Samuel 1:3 that Elkanah went to Shiloh four times a year.

Working within the frame of our The Light of the First Day  © project on artistic and intellectual interpretation of the Jewish Biblical and Talmudic knowledge, The Rogatchi Foundation  team believes to resolve the matter.  Inna Rogatchi (C). The Light of the Torah I. The Light of the First Day project. Watercolour, crayons a encre, oil pastel, hand-applied gold leaf on authored original archival print on cotton paper. 30 x 40 cm. 2018-2019. Private collection, Israel.

In the fundamental Jewish narrative, there is an established tradition of deducting the number of times from the Biblical narrative while equaling the written actions as times. 

Such approach is applied, for example, in the deduction of number of the Thirteen Attributes of the Creator’s Mercy (Exod. 32:10) as commented by Rashi and other illustrious Biblical commentators; in the Passover Haggadah when Rabbi Jose the Galilean, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Akiva are deducting the number of plagues sent by the Creator over Egypt and Egyptians; and all over the Talmud.  We thought that the same way of thinking should be applied to crack the puzzle on Elkanah’s pilgrimages. 

Our understanding  is based on the method which is regularly applied in deduction of a number of actions/reasons in analysing and commentaries of the Jewish sacred texts. This method counts the actions of Elkanah as cited in the passage in Talmud Yerushalaim, as follow: 

  1. [And the man [Elkanah] would ascend from his city – one, 
  2. [as] was his custom                                                           – two, 
  3. to bow down                                                                      – three, 
  4. and bring sacrifices [to the God of Hosts in Shiloh    –  four. 

From the result of this application, it is clear that Elkanah went to Shiloh four times. 

We were happy to be supported in this understanding by such renowned Jewish Biblical authority of our times  as Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh who graciously commented on our finding with regard to Elkanah: ‘ The idea that actions suggest times is correct. The allusion to that idea is that the two roots of [the words] action and times [in Hebrew] , pa’al (פעל) and pa’am (פעם) respectively, are similar to each other. They both begin with the letters פע, which means ‘appearance’. “ (Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh’s commentary on Elkanah inquiry, May 2020). Michael Rogatchi (C). Shavuot Rose. Indian ink, oil pastel on yellow Italian hand-made cotton paper. 50 x 35 cm. 2015.

What was especially interesting in the whole process of this examination of the Talmud narrative is how a wide context of moral imperatives and on the role of a woman has emerged from analysing just one phrase of the Jewish sacred text. And it all had happened on the way to the Shavuot, amidst our daily challenges of corona-affected life in so many ways. 

Two essential things we have learned during that episode of our ongoing project: the special meaning of voluntarily performed mitzvot, and the role of a woman, once again, this time, exemplified  by Chanah the mother of Samuel and the wife of Elkahan. 

In the modern practices of observation of Judaism, it is understood that undertaking mitzvot is commendable because it is an obligation. But in the case of Elkanah, his fourth extra pilgrimage to Shiloh was completely voluntarily one. And this is what matters. When people are willing to do mitzvot not because they have been told so, or reminded, or asked to do it, but because they strive to do it on their own, matters – and impacts –  in volumes more.  

Another gem from the same one passage in the Talmud Yerushalaim speaks on the role of a woman in Jewish life in general. Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh saw that in the phrase “And that man [Elkanah] ascended”, in Hebrew  “ ועלה האיש הה” , the final letters of each word from end to beginning  spell out isha (woman). This teaches us that “Everything comes from the woman.” The energy that motivated Elkanah in his special project of ascending to the Mishkan four times a year was his beloved wife, Chanah”. 

It is amazing to see so many essential things hidden in just one phrase of a well-known Biblical text. It does show in a beautiful way both eternity and encompassing of not only every word, but also of every letter of the Torah, as it is known to our sages. And it is really gratifying to celebrate Shavuot with the appearance of these gems of hidden wisdom and elegance of Judaism thinking from the very beginning of it. 

We are greeting everyone who participated  in our pre-Shavuot mini-quiz,  awarding all the participants with a special Gratitude Diploma. The picture featured in the Diploma is Inna Rogatchi’s The Thirteen Petalled Rose ( 2020) artwork depicting one of the most important symbols of the Jewish Knowledge. Inna Rogatchi (C). The Thirteen Petalled Rose. The Garment of the Moon series. Lapice pastel, crayons Luminance on authored original archival print on white cotton paper. 30 x 40 cm. 2020.

Importantly, the artwork also symbolises the idea of inner knowledge which is the essence of beauty as it is seen in Judaism. 

The one of the most beautiful moments connecting Shavuot to us is the image of Mount Sinai becoming covered in roses at the moment of giving the Torah to our people.  The power of beauty symbolised by this image can be hardly expressed better. 

The essential connection, even equalisation of knowledge , wisdom and beauty shines in the essence of Shavuot. It tells about us as about the people of the Book,  and it does it beautifully. As beautiful as a rose. The rose of Shavuot. 

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One Melody, Two Violins, Many Lives

Family Reflections on Yom HaShoah

The essay is an excerpt from Inna Rogatchi’s forthcoming book on her personal search into the dramatic saga of her Mahler- Rose-Bujanover family.

I grew up with those photos. The photos from distant beautiful fairy-like life: Tuileries Garden, Paris, elegantly dressed woman, her children surrounded by birds and flowers in a totally other dimension of life. Are those my uncle and aunt? And the elegant madame is my great-aunt? How interesting, I thought. It would be nice to speak with them, I thought. Which language should we use? My French is not so good, my German is inoperable although I do understand quite a lot of it because of Yiddish, but I do not think they have ever used it. Well, English will do then. We should be fine, I thought. Simcha Bujanover and Eleanor Rose family and their son Alex in Berlin in the 1920s and in Paris in the 1930s. (C) Inna Rogatchi archive.

I was late to speak with my great-aunt. I did locate her a few years after her passing in London in the early 1990s. Our family used to think that she was staying  in France after my great-uncle, quite famous doctor Simcha Bujanover’s death there in Aix-en-Provence the late 1970s. I was surprised to find out that today doctors in Europe are still using my grandfather’s brother Simcha’s book on gynaecology and paediatric studies published in 1921 in Berlin. 

I like to look at the only photo of Simcha we had, the one on which he is most probably in Zurich where he studied, with my other great-uncle Chaim Bujanover, before the start of the Great War. Back to Ukraine, in 1918 Chaim was decapitated by Ukrainian Petljura animalistic gang on his way home after the date with his fiancee. Chaim and Simcha ( sitting ) Bujanover brothers in Zurich, before the Great War. (C) Inna Rogatchi Archive.

By the time I established that Simcha’s wife Eleanor Rose-Bujanover had relocated to London, I could only gather parts of facts and memories about her and her family. And what an illustrious family it was. Performing violinist, Eleanor was a niece of Arnold Rose, famous violinist, the concertmaster of Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for over fifty years and the co-founder and leader of the great Rose Quartet, eternal gem of the world music heritage. Arnold was married to Justine Mahler, the sister of great Gustav. Eleanor Rose in the 1920s in Berlin. Rose Family Archive.

The other co-founder of the Rose Quartet was Arnold’s brother Eduard, the one of the great cellists of his time. They were four great Rose brothers, coming to the top of the Western music from Jassy in Romania, all born Rosenblums. Jassy was quite a place to be born for an art-affiliated Jews. The place is known traditionally as the Cultural Capital of Romania, with a huge and thriving Jewish community there in the past, the community which needed as many as 127 synagogues in the second part of the 19th century. Jassi is known in the Jewish cultural history as the place of  both the first ever Yiddish newspaper and first ever professional Yiddish theatre appeared. Notably, brilliant Naftali Hertz Imber happened to write the text of Hatikvah while being just there in the course of his never-stopped journeys. The Rosenblum-turn-Rose family was moved to Vienna some seven years before that important fact of Jewish history.  The main reason for the move is understood to be a strong musical talent demonstrated by all four Rose brothers. In Vienna they mastered their talent to shining brilliance. 

In a significant inter-mingling of Rose and Mahler families, two of the Rose brothers, Arnold and Eduard married two of Gustav Mahler’s sisters, Justine and Emma. While Eduard and Emma were staying in Weimar, Arnold and Justine were  living and working in Vienna where Arnold was perceived as the most famous of great Viennese musicians, ‘The God of the Violin’, as Oscar Kokoshka called him.  Oscar Kokoschka (C). Still-Life. Watercolour. 1942. The artist created this work as his gift to Arnold Rose in 1942. Kokoschka’s inscription on the art work reads: “To the god of the violin, in your winter of exile”. Courtesy: The Gustav Mahler-Alfred Rose Collection , Music Library, University of Western Ontario, Canada – The Mahler Foundation.

Arnold’s aristocratic admirers collected money secretly to acquire a stunning gift for his 50th birthday, Viotti Stradivarius. What a celebration it was there and then in Vienna in 1910, to laud the great Maestro. It was the year of Gustav Mahler’s death, too. Mahler’s death masque was staying with Justine and Arnold for 32 years, all the years of Justine’s life and four more, until Arnold gave it to Mahler’s daughter Anna in London in 1942. 

After receiving that extraordinary Viotti Stradivarius,  Arnold handed his previous great instrument, Guadagnini violin built in 1757 that he bought in the Netherlands in 1924 to his daughter Alma to perform on it. 

My great-aunt Eleanor, the daughter of Arnold and Edward’s brother Alexander, was quite close to Arnold and Justine’s family and their daughter Alma, her first cousin. Alma probably is the most well-known member of the Rose-Mahler-Bujanover family today, due to a couple of films, plays and books about her, all rather subjective and biased, as it happened, sadly. She was a notable violinist before the Second World War, and died tragically in Auschwitz. She was 38 at the time. 

Her mom, Mahler’s caring sister, died six years before her daughter, in her own house, in Vienna. Justine died of heart attack that has stricken her immediately after the Anschluss, when her great husband was unceremoniously kicked out of his job, and they were about to be kicked off their superb house. Justine’s heart could not take it, but at least she did not witness what her husband tragically had to endure.  

Arnold and Alma were whisked from Vienna by two British highly placed gentlemen who were admirers of their music and who were simply noble people. But when in London, elderly Arnold and his daughter were practically left on their own in the extremely daring time from 1938 onward. Alma, trying to earn some money to sustain her elderly father and herself was going back and forth from London to the Netherlands to play anywhere possible as long as it was possible. One time in a banality of evil applied to daily life in early 1940s Europe, her trip to Amsterdam had happened to be one way. There was no way back. 

She was living in hiding, in three different places over two years between 1940 and 1942, with the noble help of Dutch people. Marye Staercke who  with her husband Paul was helping Alma with her second lodging, said in her interview to Richard Newman in a noisy cafe in Amsterdam back in 1983 simply and plainly: ”Our duty was to help anyone who did need the help”.   

I am a big proponent of documentary materials and in particular footage and recorded oral history. No transcript would relay personal recollections in the way a person does it by him- or herself. So listening to the only publicly accessible live interview of the person who hid Alma Rose for 16 months between August 1941 until December 1942 brings the sense of the events alive to me. 

As it had happened with many creative women during the Second World War with the Final Solution-in-progress, many of them got panicking and were trying to hide, to run, to disappear feverishly, being extremely nervous, quite understandably. In several tragic cases I know personally, it fired back. Alma’s case happened to be the one of them. She contacted the people in the Dutch Resistance and asked them to smuggle her to safety. In such operations, it was accustomed that somebody from Resistance would accompany the person on the run. In Alma’s case, it was a young Dutch man. After a very daring journey via France, with constant passing from one underground contact to another,  and never being sure of anything and anyone, both of them have finally boarded a train from Dijon to Switzerland. The safety was literally around the corner.

Alma and her travelling companion who all his remaining life was refusing to come with his real name publicly, were arrested on that train just before it would start to move, in December 1942. It is assumed that they were  denounced by the French agents of the Gestapo who infiltrated the French Resistance. As we know, it was quite wide and pretty efficient infiltration.  The last photo of Alma Rose taken by Paul Staercke in Amsterdam in December 1942 just shortly before Alma’s attempt to run to safety. Photo courtesy: Staercke family archive. The copy of the photo is shown in the Richard Newman’s Alma Rose. Vienna to Auschwitz book, 2000. Newman received the photo on his request from Marye and Paul Staercke in the 1980s.

After several weeks of harsh interrogations in the Gestapo prison in Dijon, in a known proceeding, Alma was transported first to Drancy, and was registered there as entering in January 1943 under the number 18547.  Before the Nazis were taken over the operation there (it was run for them by the French until the summer of 1943), terrified friends from the Netherlands tried every possible way to delay her further transportation from Dancy to the East, meaning Auschwitz. I saw the documents in which it is said that the French top musicians have informed famous and known as being in excellent terms with the Nazis pianist Alfred Corrot about Alma’s desperate situation hoping that ‘he would take it close to his heart’. There is no evidence that he did. 

As it is believed by her family and historians who were looking into  some episodes of that tragic saga, Alma’s destiny was sealed with Eichmann’s decision to take Drancy under the German control and operate it completely.  Eichmann chose his compatriot Alois Brunner to be his envoy there and his personal deputy at the Drancy in June 1943. The Nazis were repeatedly dissatisfied with how inefficiently French were doing the job, and insisted that the quota for the transports to the East should be fixed even if it meant to fill the transports with non-Jewish French whoever would be suitable for it: communists, Resistance members, Maki. 

Brunner acted in his and Eichmann’s ‘small clerk’s way’: in his new capacity, he arrived at Drancy in mid-June 1943, set up a small table in an unremarkable room there, and methodically personally interrogated all prisoners at the Drancy during four days, non-stop. With this round done, Brunner disappeared for some while. 

In three weeks sharp, Brunner sent Eichmann a report on completion of a new Judentransport with 1000 Jews, asking for Eichmann’s written approval of the order. Four weeks sharp from the day of his appointment to the position of Dancy Nazi supervisor, Brunner sent off Convoy Number 57 to Auschwitz with one thousand Jewish people in it. Alma was among them. The family believed that being Viennese, Brunner must have known who Alma Rose was.

Of that one thousand people on the convoy 57, thirty men and twenty two women survived. And that unremarkable Brunner, the butcher of Viennese and Salonica’s entire Jewry, plus an exterminator of the Drancy, lived until at least 2001 being well in Syria and Egypt, dealing arms and being military adviser to nice rulers of those countries in various periods of time. Why Brunner was allowed to live at least to 89 and to die of a natural cause is the one of the biggest mysteries, to me. 

Transported to Auschwitz, Alma was soon made the leader of the female orchestra there. She died under still unclear circumstances in April 1944. 

After her death, her bow with a black ribbon on it was on display on the wall of the female orchestra barrack in Auschwitz. During the days of mourning Alma, Mengele entered the barrack, went towards the wall, and stayed there looking at Alma’s bow for a long time. The players of the female orchestra who happened to be inside at the time, were astounded. 

* * *

In a few weeks after that weird episode, Elie Wiesel’s family, arrested and transported on Shavuot 1944, was brought to Auschwitz. It has been a month since Alma’s death. Elie did tell later on that he was surprised to see that the one of the top-officers whom he later identified as Mengele, was walking around the platform sorting the people unloaded from the trains – to the left and to the right, to be spared for the time being, and to be eliminated immediately, – by a bow. A violin bow!  – emphasised Elie being ever surprised on that odd scene . 

Elie was an aspiring violinist himself, he came to the death camp carrying his own violin, that’s why that bow in Mengele’s hands grabbed his attention and was imprinted in his memory for good. Elie’s violin was soon crushed physically and with a laugh by one of the Polish or Ukrainian capos when Elie being prompted by his father went to the Nazi who was responsible for an orchestra and asked to be taken in there. Ellie did not like to join that orchestra, he was not in a mood to play, to put it mildly. But his father who did care for him, especially after they were left alone after Ellie’s mother and young sister were murdered on the arrival, following Mengele’s gesture by that bow , was trying to save his young son. He knew that people taken to the orchestra were fed better, so it was a higher chance for his beloved son to survive. 

Elisha Wiesel begged his son to try to get himself to the orchestra. But the local capo did not believe that the youth could be an able violinist, and then, what a pleasure it was for him to crush a violin by his dirty boot. So, Elie had no chance to join the one of the Auschwitz male orchestras, but he did remember that bow in Mengele’s hand instead of his usual whip. Inna Rogatchi (C). Reading Elie Wiesel. Watercolour, Indian ink on authored original archival print on cotton paper. 40 x 40 cm. 2018-2019. Ghetto Waltz series.

It was an Alma’s bow. I am positive on that, due to the chronology of the events, Ellie’s first-hand detail, and the  Mengele and many Nazis’ perverted attitude towards the music. For some reason, not many people know till today that the favourite by Eichmann himself his own nickname among the  close circle of his lackeys was ‘Maestro’. That ‘Maestro’ loved to play a violin, or pretend to do so, and at some stage did have somebody’s Stradivarius to torment it. 

They did many behavioural details similar, those evils in human disguise. Long before Mengele and many others on that platform in Auschwitz were having a pleasure  tending a whip in their gloved hands, Hitler was known to walk with a whip on Berlin streets, to the terrified surprise of many there yet in early 1930s, according to the first-hand memories of the Bonhoeffer family members. 

I am sure that Mengele has decided the destiny of Elie Wiesel’s family, his mother and sister, as so many others, by pointing them towards the death with Alma Rose’s bow. I was tracing the Rose family’s violins for years, and was able to do it. Except that bow. That bow. 

* * * 

Alma did not take her Guadagnini on the run with her. She left it with a trusted friend in Amsterdam. The instrument came to that man with a hand-written notice from Alma: “Not to be lost”. Alma friends from her dramatic years in the Netherlands observed later on that she was attached to that violin incredibly.  She also wrote a will. As it happened, she did it a bit over 3 weeks before her arrest. It is a two-phrase will, literally, appointing two of her close friends, in succession, ‘to organise her funeral and to dispose of her belongings’.  The biggest treasure of which was her and her father’s Guadagnini. Inna Rogatchi (C). Alma Rose Guadagnini 1757 violin. Milan. Presentation material. (C).

That violin was brought to poor 82-year Arnold Rose, a great violinist of Vienna, to his London lodging, in the Autumn of 1945, with no words articulated. No words were needed. About the same time, he had also received from another person Alma’s wrist watch and her mother Justine Mahler’s precious pearls necklace. The decent woman who was with Alma at Drancy and whom Alma trusted her family belongings shortly before being sent on the Judentransport convoy 57, returned the Alma’s possessions to her friends in Amsterdam.

Arnold died soon after receiving back his own Guadagnini on which his daughter would not play anymore. 

I traced the life of that beautiful instrument built by a great Italian master in Milan in 1757. It is a story of its own. The Alma Rose Guadagnini violin, as it is known officially now, after being with Arnold’s pupil and great violinist, the concertmaster of Metropolitan, Felix Eyle from 1947 to the end of his life in 1988, nowadays is  a property of a well-known musician who prefers not to be named. The Arnold’s great Viotti Stradivarious built in 1709 nowadays belongs to the collection of the original rare instruments of the National Bank of Austria. Special committee there decides on their instruments’ loans to leading musicians. 

As it happened, Alma Rose should not have run in the first place, the same, as Nathalie Kraemer who made the same mistake at the same time in 1943 in France. The family who hid Alma exclaimed in despair soon after the end of the war: “Nobody ever came here to check on her! She would be safe if she would stay with us!” It is heart-wrenching to know it. And it was like that for Eleanor, Alma’s first cousin and completely devastated Arnold, her father who lost his wife, his beloved daughter, his work, his music, his house, his life. 

He also lost his brother Eduard who co-founded the Rose Quartet with him back in 1882. In Weimar, Eduard suffered the same destiny as his brother in Vienna: being the first cellist in the Weimar State Orchestra, he was kicked off his work at the first opportunity. He lived alone in their house after the death of his wife Emma in 1933, the other sister of Gustav Mahler, and was thrown out of it unceremoniously by the Nazis, placed in the infamous Ghetto House in  Weimar, and eventually taken to Theresienstadt in 1942. During his last years, over 80-year old Eduard was summoned to Weimar Gestapo many times for long humiliating interrogations. Somebody there have had a special pleasure to torture an elderly musical legend. Eduard Rose was murdered in Therezin in 1943. He was 83 years old.Eduard Rose, eminent cellist murdered in Tereziensdadt in 1943 in the age of 83. Courtesy: The Mahler Foundation.

The Rose Quartet was playing with phenomenal success for fifty five years. There never would be anything like that in the history of music. 

* * * 

I will not be speaking with my uncle Alexander either. In the photos, Alex looks exactly like my other uncle Leonid, the brother of my father Isaac. Alex became the doctor, like his father Simcha, my grandfather’s brother. He was a good, promising doctor and a brave young man. He ran from occupied Paris to Switzerland successfully, I found the traces of him illegally crossing the border, in several archives. As soon as the war was over, Alex went to one of the DCPs, Displaced Persons Camps, to treat thousands of people gathered after the Nazi camps there. He contracted the typhus from some of his patients and died in 1948. He was 28 years old. His mom, Eleanor Rose never came to terms with Alex’s death. She was positive that her beloved son could have been saved. “It was after the Shoah, after!” – she used to exclaim in defiance, according to the people who were talking with her years after the war, already in the 1980s. Eleanor Rose in her flat in London in the 1980s. Courtesy: Rose family archive.

* * * *

All these years after the war and piled with terrible news of fallen members of once brilliant musical dynasty, Eleanor was looking for one record. The record. She knew that father and daughter Rose, her uncle and cousin, recorded the elegant J.-S. Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor back in 1928. As it happened, it is the only known record of Alma Rose. She played on her Guadagnini for the record, and her father Arnold played on his Viotti Stradivarius. There are few records of Arnold surviving, and some of the Rose Quartet, but this record of Arnold and Alma of 1928 is the only one known.Arnold and Alma Rose in 1927 , a year before making that only known record of them playing together and only known record of Alma Rose. Courtesy: The Gustav Mahler-Alfred Rose Archive.

Eleanor tried every way and person she knew to find the record, with no much luck. It truly was – and still is – an extremely rare record to find. 

Eleanore Rose died of heart-failure in her ripe age in 1992. On the day of her funeral, the post arrived at her flat in London. In a small envelope, there was the record she was desperately looking for so many years. Austrian geologist  turned music historian and archivist and living in Germany, Wolfgang Wendel did find the record and sent it to Eleanor. It just did not make it in time.   Inna Rogatchi (C). Arnold & Alma Rose original record. Fine Art Photography Collage. 2012. Presentation material (C).

Mr Wendel kindly sent the record  to me too. Initially, I could not listen to it. It was too painful. For years, I’ve trained myself to listen to the unique record, bit by bit. 

What is also amazing is that my husband Michael, independently, did paint that very piece of Bach’s music which happened to be his favourite music by the great composer. Michael Rogatchi (C). J.-S. Bach. Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor. Oil on canvas. 120 x 100 cm. 2007. Private collection.

So now, that one melody and two violins, and so many human lives around it are living in its own world keeping on the memory of the part of my family alive – and remembered. 

On the eve of Yom HaShoah this year, we have made it a focus of our Special Art Bulletin of The Rogatchi Foundation Culture for Humanity Global Initiative. It can be read, watched and listened to here. 

My husband and I are very honoured to be able to maintain a memory of the brilliant musicians who did enrich the world’s culture in an important way and who were destroyed so cruelly in such matter-of-fact fashion of that diabolical Nazism machinery. 

I am honoured to remember them, but I feel so desperately sorry for them. As for everyone of our six, and most likely more millions, our Shoah toll, with more than a third of our murdered people still remaining nameless. So indefinitely sorry. Inna Rogatchi (C). Cloud View II. Fragment V. Crayons a encre, crayons Luminance on authored original archival print on watercolour 350 mg paper. 42 x 59 cm. 2019-2020. Ghetto Waltz and The Songs of Our Souls series.

No speeches would ever amend the damage and crimes committed. But a melody played by two people, a father and a daughter, superb musicians from a great family in the history of a world culture, played by two of them 92 years ago, almost a century back, is alive. Despite anything. This is a miracle which is the secret of Jewish survival. And this is unbeatable by any evil. 

I guess I was able to speak with my exterminated relatives, after all. It is an indescribable feeling. It is only up to music to relate it. 

The essay is an excerpt from Inna Rogatchi’s forthcoming book on her personal search into the dramatic saga of her Mahler- Rose-Bujanover  family. 

April 2020.