Piece by Holocaust survivor to be performed for first time

Months before the Russian invasion, Long Islander Andrea Bolender went to Ukraine to visit Babi Yar, the ravine outside Kyiv, where on Sept. 29-30, 1941, German Nazis slaughtered 33,771 Jews.

Bolender, who is chair of the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County in Glen Cove, was part of an American delegation to the site.

Among those at the ceremonies was Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, himself a Jew.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February and the history of the Holocaust both highlight the importance of a concert the memorial center will host April 20 at Carnegie Hall titled "Hymns from Auschwitz," Bolender said. The concert is tied to Holocaust Remembrance Day. Special to it is a piece, written in 1947 by Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp survivor Michel Assael, called "Auschwitz Symphonic Poem." It will be performed for the first time.

The piece was uncovered by Dr. Joe Halio, a leader in the Greek Jewish Sephardic community on Long Island. His family, like that of Assael, once hailed from Salonica, Greece. Assael's daughter, Debbie, is a musician on Broadway. Halio inked the previously undiscovered symphonic piece to the museum — and the performance. One of Halio's patients was Bolender's mother, Ruth.

The concert, presented in collaboration with the Turkish American Arts Society of New York, will feature performances by the New Manhattan Sinfonietta, Turkish pianist Renan Koen and renowned Turkish maestro Gurer Aykal. A longtime supporter of the Holocaust center, Martin Elias, is the honoree.

"We say, 'Never again,'" Bolender said, "and yet here we are, seeing these things happening again. Our museum is to remember the Holocaust, to fight antisemitism, to fight prejudice and all manifestations of hate. Yet it is happening again in real time, it is happening live, before our eyes … We can see it. And so what does it mean when we say, 'Never again.' It's happening now."

"The images from Ukraine," Meryl Menashe, a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum fellow and a historian at the Glen Cove museum, said. "All you have to do is turn them to black and white and they look the same from the Holocaust. This is why we must raise awareness, why we must keep awareness."

Menashe said her own DNA is tied to Lviv, Ukraine, home to her father and grandfather. Her father-in-law was held prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Bolender is one of four children of a Holocaust survivor. Her father, Benek Bolender, a native of Czyzewo, Poland, was also at Auschwitz-Birkenau — the number 86786, tattooed on his arm by the Nazis at age 14, remained until his death in 1999.

Benek Bolender's mother, sister and two brothers all were killed at Auschwitz. His father was shot before his family was taken away.

Koen says what makes that original manuscript by Assael haunting is that it captures that horror, that pain.

"It's his memories of Auschwitz, when he was part of playing music at Auschwitz as people went to the gas chambers, and there are those dark memories in it, as well," she said. "Listeners will be emotionally stirred, for sure. They will think about this, they will feel this, all these disturbing emotions."

"Music lives forever," Bolender said. "Art lives forever. And the memories live forever through art, through music and through the stories we tell. Survivors tell the story and bear witness. The survivors are passing … If we forget them, their stories won't live at all.

"We can never forget them … That is why this concert is important."

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”