Sing Along With Adolf
- Steven Rodan
- Dec 4, 2023
- 5 min read
By Steve Rodan
Five years after its establishment, the State of Israel agreed that it needed to acquaint the Jews with Hitler's favorite composers.
In April 1953, the stage was set for a concert tour by violinist Jascha Heifetz that would include the work of Richard Strauss, a member of the Nazi Party before World War II and leading composer in the Third Reich. The timing was not coincidental. Just days earlier, on March 26, the so-called reparations agreement between Israel and West Germany took effect, an arrangement that overnight would make Bonn the leading economic partner of the new Jewish state.
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion rolled out the carpet for Heifetz and Strauss. The concerts took place in state-financed or -sponsored auditoriums and performed by state-funded orchestras. Two of Ben-Gurion's Cabinet ministers, one of whom represented German Jews, pleaded with Heifetz to drop Strauss' E Flat Violin Sonata from his program. Some 25,000 Israelis had just returned from a memorial for the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising a decade earlier.
Heifetz refused and threatened to cancel his tour. Ben-Gurion supported Heifetz and promised the violinist police protection. The prime minister also said he would attend the performances "although I don't understand music." 1[
'Stony silence'
The embrace of Hitler's composers by the Israeli regime did not reflect public opinion. In Tel Aviv, the audience sat in "stony silence." After Heifetz's concert in Jerusalem, he was attacked outside his hotel by a man who slammed a crowbar on the musician's hand.
But the dye was cast. For the next six decades, the state would use its authority to ram Nazi composers as well as those who inspired Hitler down the throats of Israeli Jews. In the name of artistic freedom, Holocaust survivors and their families would watch as the music that was played to the execution of countless Jews was played on state radio and in concert halls everywhere.
But artistic freedom had nothing to do with the decision to play the works of German anti-Semites. This had been the third tour of Heifetz and he had never played Wagner or Strauss in the Jewish state. The world-renowned musician, born into a Jewish family in Lithuania, had never performed German music during his tour of U.S. military bases in occupied Germany after World War II. He would never play in Germany again. [2]
Strauss for German money
Instead, the decision to play Strauss had everything to do with Germany's attempt to introduce Hitler's culture into the state of the Jews. With West Germany, everything was a pro quid quo: The Bonn government was accused of pandering to the Jews by paying them compensation for the Final Solution? Chancellor Konrad Adenauer would make sure that the Israeli leadership would be condemned for being pro-Nazi.
Israel would eventually receive billions of dollars. But Bonn and later Berlin would dictate what Israelis would listen to, what would be taught in schools, what they see on the news and whom their children would be forced to meet. The Germans were thorough. Heifetz's tour even included Eilat, a backwater on the shores of the Red Sea and with a population of less than 1,000.
"Where is the moral legitimacy to present brazen arguments against Jascha Heifetz?" Israeli columnist David Flinker asked. "German industry is kosher and only German music is in the realm of treif?" [3]
After Heifetz was assaulted, Wagner disappeared from the concert program. Despite Ben-Gurion's encouragement, the violinist did not include Strauss in the benefit concert for the new Weizmann institute of Science in Rehovot, named after the Zionist leader and Israel's first president. Heifetz also cut short his tour, cancelling his final concert in Tel Aviv. Three days after the Jerusalem concert, Heifetz left Israel. He would not return for nearly 20 years.
Hitler's Music in Palestine
The Israeli coercion of German Jew-haters began far earlier. The Zionist leadership, again in an agreement with Hitler's Germany, sponsored performances of the worst of the anti-Semites, including Richard Wagner. Even as the Nazis killed Jews on the streets of German cities, the Palestine Symphony Orchestra played these works. In November 1938, after thousands of Jews were killed throughout Germany in what was known as Kristallnacht, the orchestra, later the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, dropped Wagner's opera [4]
The ones who knew first-hand the lethality of Hitler's music were the Holocaust survivors. They saw how the Germans used music to intensify their brutality and provide entertainment for genocide. Wagner was blared in Dachau to drown out the cries of the tortured. Hitler's favorite compositions were ordered to be played by Jewish orchestras in Auschwitz and other death camps, usually when the Jews lined up for the gas chambers or during an execution of an inmate. Unlike Wagner, Strauss, who died in 1949, was not merely an inspiration for Hitler. He worked for Josef Goebbels, the propaganda minister of the Reich. But the 1953 tour marked only the start of West Germany's determination to dictate culture and history in Israel. Bonn sponsored intense exchanges in schools, sports and youth. The Germans financed dialogues on religion and brought thousands of young Germans to Israel. All of these programs were financed by the German government. Even independent organizations could get paid for bringing Germans to Israel, as long as they would meet Israeli Jews. [5] Throughout the decade, Ben-Gurion urged Adenauer to expand German efforts and pay for others. Ben-Gurion's motto was "Money has no smell." [6] Walk-out for Wagner Until today, Israel has sponsored Hitler's music. In 1981, the state decided to introduce Wagner. Again, Israel brought in a famous musician, conductor Zubin Mehta, to carry the flag. Mehta waited until the end of a concert by the Israel Philharmonic to play Wagner, prefacing this by telling the audience that anybody could leave if he felt like it. Two Holocaust survivors in the Philharmonic walked out. [7]
What struck even the most ardent lovers of German culture was the coercion by the State of Israel. There was no debate in the Knesset, and the Holocaust survivors -- who during the 1950s represented a huge constituency -- were not consulted. What was particularly galling was the state's insistence on sponsoring the recitals of Strauss and later Wagner. David Witztum spent virtually his entire career associated with Germany. A son of German Jewish immigrants, he was sent to West Germany as the correspondent for Israel Television. After more than 25 years in Germany, Witztum returned to lecture on German history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "I'm in favor of his music being performed in private, unofficial venues..." Witztum said. "Those in official settings, and any orchestra with official national status such as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, must act humbly and refrain from performing Wagner as long as there are Holocaust survivors among us. This whole debate has nothing to do with music, but only with consideration for people whom we appreciate in a special way." [8] Notes 1. The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust. Tom Segev. Page 221. Keter, Jerusalem. 1992
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