“Deliver Me, O Lord, from Eternal Death on that Fearful Day…”

Verdi’s Requiem was performed sixteen times at the Terezín ghetto. Survivors testified that singing and listening to this piece of music were forever imprinted in their minds as some of the most meaningful and stirring experiences of that time, or even of their entire lives. Why have the performances of Verdi’s Requiem in Terezín acquired such a singular, even mythical status, among inmates and survivors of the ghetto? In this essay I will try to establish that the remarkable emotional power of the performance hinged on several factors: The content and character of the piece itself; the history of its composition and reception by the public in Italy; its implicit as well as explicit links to Jewish traditions; and the sense of defiance it produced in both participants and audiences in the context of performing it in the ghetto. I will also show that the therapeutic potential of the performance in the ghetto contributed further to its effect. The essay is based on a chapter from my Ph.D. thesis, Voices from the Valley of Shadows of Death – The Vocal Music in Ghetto Terezín, which examined the music composed and/or performed in Terezín from 1941 to 1945, and the explicit and implicit meanings it carried for the prisoners in the ghetto. My work drew on testimonies of survivors, some of which I interviewed myself and others taken from public sources; and on written testimonies and documents from Terezín found in Israeli and Czech archives, or kept privately. The literature I used does not focus exclusively on the Terezín ghetto or on the Holocaust; it explores various other fields, relating to my thesis argument that the meanings embodied in music performed in the ghetto generated or had the potential to generate unique experiences for Terezín inmates in that historical moment. Thus, I examined these potential meanings through multiple disciplinary perspectives, taking into account both the specific nature of each musical work, and their particular genres. As for the performance of Verdi’s Requiem in Terezín, conductor Rafael Schächter’s determination on performing it repeatedly, despite internal Jewish resistance and tremendous external obstacles, supports my assumption that he chose the Requiem in full awareness of the special meaning it carried for that dark historical moment.