Puzzling BBC presentations on Holocaust Memorial Day 2025

Agnes Kory considers the BBC’s programming on Holocaust Memorial Day 2025

Full credit to the BBC for giving its all to commemorate the International Holocaust Memorial Day which on 27th January this year marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Of the many BBC programmes, I attended two and watched one on BBC2. Most or perhaps all who attended or watched the same programmes seem to have been wholly satisfied. However, although I am grateful to the BBC for making such huge efforts, I am frustrated and puzzled in equal measure.

Apart from commemorating, what was the BBC trying to do? To educate or to entertain or to win stripes in the fierce competition between Holocaust programmes?

I am a Jewish Holocaust Child Survivor, a life-long voluntary Holocaust researcher as well as a life-long passionate music teacher. This is the background with which I am now reporting.

I may (or may not) be biased but all three programmes are available to all to check out.

Radio 3, 7.30 pm, Monday 27th January 2025

Radio 3 in Concert
recorded in the Maida Vale studio in front of an invited audience on 14th January

László Weiner – Overture, for small orchestra
Jonathan Dove – In Exile
Ernest Bloch – Suite Symphonique
Viktor Ullmann – Symphony No.2

The BBC tells us that the works presented are by composers of Jewish heritage whose lives were ended by the Nazis in the Holocaust, alongside a composer exiled to the United States, and a commemorative work written in 2020 by Jonathan Dove.

The BBC specifies that Ernest Bloch was exiled from Switzerland to the USA in 1939. This is incorrect, so why say so?

Swiss-born Bloch toured the United States in 1916 and settled in New York. In 1920 he became the first director of the Cleveland Institute of Music, a position he held until 1925. Bloch became a U.S. citizen in 1924. He directed the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 1925 to 1930.

In 1930 he went to Switzerland, but he returned to the United States in December 1938. In June 1939 he received an offer to teach at the University of California at Berkeley. His association with Berkeley lasted until his retirement in 1952.

The BBC specifies that both László Weiner’s Overture and Viktor Ullmann’s Second Symphony were left unpublished at the composers’ deaths in Nazi camps. This statement implies – although admittedly does not specify – that the works are still unpublished. Not so!

The orchestral score of Weiner’s Overture was published by his family in 1995. Orchestral parts have never been published, so it is a mystery how the BBC SO (and, for their performance in 2013, the American Symphony Orchestra) produced the parts.

Ullmann’s Second Symphony was not written as such by the composer. He made notes for possible orchestration in his Piano Sonata No.7 (1944) but he was murdered before any of his ideas could have further developed. The piano sonata was published by Schott in 1997; the symphonic version is a reconstruction by Bernhard Wulff, published by Schott in 1989.

The BBC did not misinform about the only non-Jewish composer on the programme. Jonathan Dove’s In Exile for cello, baritone and orchestra (2020) was commissioned by cellist Raphael Wallfisch and dedicated to his mother, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was the cellist in the mind-blowing Auschwitz women orchestra.

I have been privileged to meet Anita, now 99 years of age, some sixty years ago: she was and remains an exceptional witness to history.

Well done BBC for programming a work dedicated to her and having Anita’s son (cellist Raphael Wallfisch) and grandson (baritone Simon Wallfisch) performing the solo parts.

BBC 2, 9pm, Monday 27th January 2025

The Last Musician of Auschwitz

Raphael Wallfisch playing cello for his mother Anita Lasker-Wallfisch at her London home in 2024 © BBC

This documentary seems to have been titled in honour of 99-year-old cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, by now the only surviving member of the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz. However, I assumed that the programme indeed would be about Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: this was on the tin, this is what I expected.

In the event, Anita did appear and made remarkable contributions – her lack of sentimentality and down to earth observations were more chilling than sensationalism applied elsewhere – but we had very little of her.

Perhaps the BBC was keen to educate and inform wider than just Anita. However, their method was rather strange in several aspects.

They showed several interviews of various lengths with many unnamed survivors. Not only were they not named but one could have thought that they were interviewed for this programme. Not so!

I nearly fell off my chair when the first unnamed survivor spoke briefly: she was a close friend of mine for several decades, she died thirteen years ago in 2012. It is not known when this interview was made (although presumably someone at the BBC knows).

Was this method commemoration or perhaps borderline exploitation?

I am not sure why the BBC felt the need to include a section of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik – was it for education or entertainment? – although this piece was on the repertoire of Auschwitz orchestras (as were many other compositions from a different world). However, I am glad we heard music by Ilse Weber (murdered in Auschwitz) and Szymon Laks (who survived Auschwitz). And it was appropriate to have Anita’s son Raphael Wallfisch to contribute verbally as well as on his cello (as soloist and quartet player).

BBC 1, 7pm, Monday 27th January 2025

Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 Ceremony
recorded at London’s Guildhall earlier in the afternoon

There were many memorial gatherings for the Holocaust Memorial Day this year, I attended many. However, this memorial was the top draw. Attended by the Prime Minister and numerous top politicians as well as the Prince and Princess of Wales, the BBC pulled out all stops. Being present – in my capacity as a Holocaust survivor – I was able to observe superb BBC skills producing a top show instantly. The BBC did not just record, the BBC directed on the spot with well-planned timing.

Was this a sombre Holocaust memorial or a show to get worldwide views?

Music played a strong part, but for me the stage direction felt more Hollywood than Holocaust. Music was played during many of the speeches…pulling the heart strings as in many Hollywood films.

There was a reading from the memoirs of composer and Auschwitz survivor Szymon Laks during which a pianist played a composition by the composer. Was the music backing the text or was the reading backing the music? Surely doing each alone would have been more respectful to Szymon Laks.

Towards the end we heard a pop star of the classical music world. Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason played at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, he played at the Last Night of the Proms and now, at this memorial (or Hollywood movie?), he played an extensive section from the film Schindler’s List.

Forgive me for putting forward that this event felt primarily like a well-directed show with inappropriate exploitation of music rather than a sombre memorial for genocide victims.

Agnes Kory

2 thoughts on “Puzzling BBC presentations on Holocaust Memorial Day 2025”

  1. Thank you Agnes for always being the questioner and the seeker after the truth. How we need people like you.

    Reply

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