conditions were as awful as many other places, but despite this a rich cultural scene developed in Theresienstadt. A host of different artists and performers spent varying amounts of time in the camp-ghetto, with famous composers like Viktor Ullman and Gideon Klein making sure that Theresienstadt became famous for its musical activities. Music was also found within the camps of the Nazi empire. Here,orchestras were not normally formed by Jews but rather by the SS, partly for their own entertainment but also for public performances. These musical groups would commonly perform when trains arrived in the camps so as to reassure the new prisoners, but would also play as prisoners left for work or were being subjected to selections. Orchestras were found, not just in concentration camps, but even in the extermination centres such as Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Auschwitz-Birkenau. In this way the ability to make music both offered an opportunity to resist Nazi dehumanisation and the potential to increase one’s chance of survival – even if only for a few days, weeks or months. Yet such beliefs did not prevent an increasing number of artists, writers and performers engaging with the Holocaust during the post-war period. At first this development was slow, and it was only in the 1970s that the Holocaust really began to be an object of interest in Western society. Today, the Holocaust has a presence in many countries’ cultures around the world.

You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Deportation The rounding up of Jews from their homes for transportation in cattle wagons to ghettos and camps in Poland. The three of them were brought by train to the concentration camp from all over Europe...all Jewish, and all bound for the gas chamber and extermination like so many millions.’Hay Festival 'Michael Morpurgo: The Mozart Question Concert', Hay Festival [Online]. Available at:https://www.hayfestival.com/p-9220-michael-morpurgo.aspx (Accessed 8 June 2015)

The Holocaust can be defined as the persecution and extermination of around six million Jewish men, women and children. It was not an inevitable occurrence but it did draw on short and longer-term trends in history. Anti-Jewish prejudice had a long history in Europe, but the rise of science in the 18th and 19th centuries saw hostile perceptions about the Jews no longer based just on religion. Instead, new scientific thinking and findings were manipulated to justify hatred of Jews, with the ideas of humans belonging to different races of differing values fighting for survival now used for old prejudices. After the upheaval and bloodshed of World War One, such irrational thoughts became more intense and popular – particularly, but not exclusively, in Germany. Lara Lewis exudes effervescent naïvety both as the young reporter sent to interview Gino’s son Paolo, who carries forward his father’s Mozart secret, and the young Paolo himself. For some survivors, using different art forms became a crucial means to expressing thoughts and feelings. In this way, many of the compositions and adaptations created during the Holocaust in camps and ghettos continued to be performed – partly out of respect for those who Gilbert, Shirli (2005) Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps.Oxford: Clarendon Press.I grew up as a schoolboy under the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral, singing in its choir and cloisters, went to communion there in the crypt every Sunday morning, so a great cathedral is part of my being. Each is different, but each is a magnificent statement in stone and stained glass, of faith and hope, and the men and architects who built them, inspired by faith. They built them for worship, for music and song, for the gathering of a community, to pray and to contemplate. Michael Morpurgo 'The Mozart Question', Michael Morpurgo [Online]. Available at:http://michaelmorpurgo.com/books/the-mozart-question (Accessed 8 June 2015)

I wondered how it must have been for a musician who played in such hellish circumstances, who adored Mozart as I do – what thoughts came when playing Mozart later in life. This was the genesis of my story, this and the sight of a small boy in a square by the Accademia Bridge in Venice, sitting one night, in his pyjamas on his tricycle, listening to a busker. He sat totally enthralled by the music that seemed to him, and to me, to be heavenly. Michael Morpurgo gave some insight into his story and why the adaptation was written to be performed in cathedrals: The production delivers a feeling of the desperate, heart-rending choices faced by those forced to serenade their families and kin to death. Since it opened in 2018, the Barn, Cirencester has become Michael Morpurgo Central, enjoying an unusually close creative relationship with the former Children’s Laureate. With the pandemic-delayed premiere of a new theatrical version of The Mozart Question, that makes four productions of his work in as many years – but this is the most demanding. For others like Paolo’s father however, art was corrupted by their experiences of the Holocaust. A famous philosopher named Theodor Adorno once remarked that to create art after Auschwitz was ‘barbaric’, and, although he later revised this position, many people seized upon his idea. According to this thinking, since the Nazis had used and exploited art in all its forms to promote their ideology and beliefs, it was no longer appropriate or possible to make art for art’s sake. Equally it was said that no poem, painting or song could ever really represent the horrors of the Holocaust, and that no one could really understand what happened in the camps unless they were actually there. Because of this it was said that it was better not to try and do so.

Narrated by Michael and directed by Simon Reade, The Mozart Question is beautifully enhanced and embellished with extracts of music by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Vivaldi. Featuring actress Victoria Moseley, violinist Daniel Pioro and the Storyteller’s Ensemble, the performance interweaves words and music to tell this haunting tale of survival against the odds. Records of the performances survive including concert programmes which provide an insight into the type of music that was played. German marches, popular melodies, operettas and works by well-known composers including Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Strauss were often to be found in the programmes. Formal performances usually consisted of two parts, with an interval, and lasted for the duration of between 8 and 10 pieces.