Music amongst Displaced Persons
The Displaced Persons’ (DP) camps of occupied post-war Europe were home to a diverse range of musical activities. In the American and British zones of occupatio
David Botwinik is a composer of Yiddish music and a music teacher. At the age of almost 13, he began his studies at the Yidisher muzik-institut conservatory in Vilna. Later, he studied at the Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia, Rome, Italy.
The prolific Soviet composer Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) wrote 22 symphonies, 17 string quartets, 7 operas, 6 concertos, 3 ballets, 30 sonatas and more than 200 songs as well as 60 film scores and incidental music for theatre and circus.
Mikhail Fabianovich Gnessin was a Russian Jewish composer and teacher. Gnessin's works "The Maccabeans" and "The Youth of Abraham" earned him the nickname the "Jewish Glinka".
The Displaced Persons’ (DP) camps of occupied post-war Europe were home to a diverse range of musical activities. In the American and British zones of occupatio
After the liberation Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945, British occupation forces established a Displaced Persons’ camp for survivors.
The Yiddish song 'On a heym, on a dakh' (Without a home, without a roof) was collected from a young Jewish survivor named Ludwig Hamburger by the Latvian-Americ
The end of WWII presented ORT and other relief organisations with many challenges. As many as 80,000 Jews passed through ORT training projects after the war.