NEW HOLOCAUST® DRAMA
Jews upset over proposed performance
of Hitler's favorite composer
Discord in Israel over orchestra's plans to play at Wagner festival
Proposed performance at Bayreuth has reopened old wounds
By CATRINA STEWART
The Independent, London Thursday, 7 October 2010
BAYREUTH, Germany — Nearly 130 years after his death, Richard Wagner still
provokes a maelstrom of emotions. Katharina Wagner, the German composer's
great-granddaughter, has pulled out of a trip to Israel where she was to announce
Discord in Israel over orchestra's plans to play at Wagner festival
Proposed performance at Bayreuth has reopened old wounds
By CATRINA STEWART
The Independent, London Thursday, 7 October 2010
BAYREUTH, Germany — Nearly 130 years after his death, Richard Wagner still
provokes a maelstrom of emotions. Katharina Wagner, the German composer's
great-granddaughter, has pulled out of a trip to Israel where she was to announce
that the Israel Chamber Orchestra would be invited to open the next season of
the prestigious Bayreuth festival, the annual celebration of Wagner's
music.
Ms. Wagner canceled the trip after the orchestra's participation was leaked
to the Israeli media, prompting a hostile reaction in Israel. Wagner is widely
shunned there for his anti-Semitic writings, which drew admiration from Adolf Hitler.
Israeli orchestras have largely honored a seven-decade boycott of Wagner's work,
partly out of respect for Holocaust® survivors, who claim Jews were sent to the
gas chambers while Wagner was played in the background.
Ms. Wagner's decision will not affect the ensemble's participation at Bayreuth
next year, which will be the first time an Israeli orchestra has taken part in the
month-long festival.
Taboo
"The decision [to take part] was not to break a taboo," Erella Talmi, who chairs
the Israeli orchestra's board of directors, told Israel Radio. "The decision was to
accept an invitation that showed a new openness."
Intended as a gesture of reconciliation between the Wagner family and Israel,
Ms. Wagner's trip was planned in total secrecy. Only a few weeks before,
Ms. Wagner told Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper she had authorized a group
of historians to investigate her family's links with the Nazi regime, including her
great-grandfather's influence on Nazi thinking.
Nevertheless, the efforts at a rapprochement have reopened old wounds in Israel,
where the composer is still widely reviled. "Our fear is that this will legitimize
Wagner in Israel," said Ephraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
the world's biggest Nazi-hunting organization. "Wagner cannot apologize. It's a
closed book. There is no way of making up for his anti-Semitic writings."
The unofficial boycott of Wagner dates back to 1938, when the Palestine
Orchestra, now known as the Israel Philharmonic, refused to perform his works
in protest at the [alleged] treatment of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
Wagner critical of Jews
Although Wagner died some 50 years before the Nazis gained power, his espousal
of German superiority over the Jews influenced Nazi thinking, and Hitler adopted
him as his favorite composer. In his book Judaism in Music,* Wagner claimed that
Jews could only produce popular, money-making music, rather than real works
of art. He also claimed Germans were repelled by contact with Jews, who dressed
and acted strangely.
In recent years, some in Israel have tried to bring Wagner to a domestic audience,
but those efforts have met with a stony reception. Daniel Barenboim, the
Argentinian-born Israeli conductor, performed part of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde
in 2001, but he was heckled and some of the audience walked out. The performance
created such a stir in Israel that several lawmakers called for a boycott of the
Jewish maestro. Only a year earlier, an Israeli orchestra had performed Wagner's
Siegfried Idyll, under the baton of the Holocaust® survivor Mendi Rodan.
Israeli orchestras have largely honored a seven-decade boycott of Wagner's work,
partly out of respect for Holocaust® survivors, who claim Jews were sent to the
gas chambers while Wagner was played in the background.
Ms. Wagner's decision will not affect the ensemble's participation at Bayreuth
next year, which will be the first time an Israeli orchestra has taken part in the
month-long festival.
Taboo
"The decision [to take part] was not to break a taboo," Erella Talmi, who chairs
the Israeli orchestra's board of directors, told Israel Radio. "The decision was to
accept an invitation that showed a new openness."
Intended as a gesture of reconciliation between the Wagner family and Israel,
Ms. Wagner's trip was planned in total secrecy. Only a few weeks before,
Ms. Wagner told Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper she had authorized a group
of historians to investigate her family's links with the Nazi regime, including her
great-grandfather's influence on Nazi thinking.
Nevertheless, the efforts at a rapprochement have reopened old wounds in Israel,
where the composer is still widely reviled. "Our fear is that this will legitimize
Wagner in Israel," said Ephraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
the world's biggest Nazi-hunting organization. "Wagner cannot apologize. It's a
closed book. There is no way of making up for his anti-Semitic writings."
The unofficial boycott of Wagner dates back to 1938, when the Palestine
Orchestra, now known as the Israel Philharmonic, refused to perform his works
in protest at the [alleged] treatment of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
Wagner critical of Jews
Although Wagner died some 50 years before the Nazis gained power, his espousal
of German superiority over the Jews influenced Nazi thinking, and Hitler adopted
him as his favorite composer. In his book Judaism in Music,* Wagner claimed that
Jews could only produce popular, money-making music, rather than real works
of art. He also claimed Germans were repelled by contact with Jews, who dressed
and acted strangely.
In recent years, some in Israel have tried to bring Wagner to a domestic audience,
but those efforts have met with a stony reception. Daniel Barenboim, the
Argentinian-born Israeli conductor, performed part of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde
in 2001, but he was heckled and some of the audience walked out. The performance
created such a stir in Israel that several lawmakers called for a boycott of the
Jewish maestro. Only a year earlier, an Israeli orchestra had performed Wagner's
Siegfried Idyll, under the baton of the Holocaust® survivor Mendi Rodan.
Colette Avital, an Israeli former politician, believes it could be years before Wagner
can comfortably be played in Israel. "As long as there are survivors of the Holocaust®,
their sensitivity has to be respected and nobody should hurt their feelings," she said.
*Available from for $12 from: NS Publications, PO Box 188, Wyandotte MI 48192.
--
Being happy–is it good for the Jews? "Before Professor Dershowitz accused me of being an anti-Semite (news to me), I was a happy person. Since then, I'm still a happy person". –Michael Santomauro
Most of us are mentally trapped to think Jewish. Actually, it is safe to say that virtually every mainstream publication or or other type of media organ is "nothing more than a screen to present chosen views." The great battle over the last century has been a battle for the mind of the Western peoples, i.e., non-Jewish Euros. The chosen won it by acquiring control over essentially the complete mainstream news, information, education and entertainment media of every type, and using that control to infuse and disseminate their message, agenda and worldview, their way of thinking, or rather the way they want us to think. Since at least the 1960s this campaign has been effectively complete. Since then they have shaped and controlled the minds of all but a seeming few of us in varying degree with almost no opposition or competition from any alternative worldview. So now most of us are mentally trapped in the box the chosen have made for us, which we have lived in all our lives. Only a few have managed to avoid it or escape it, or to even sometimes see outside of it, and so actually "think outside of the (Jewish) box." --Michael Santomauro
Thank you and remember:
Peace is patriotic!
Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
E-mail me anything:
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
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