Ute Lemper - “A Yiddishe Kind“

Piano: Francesco Lotoro Bass: Guiseppe Bassi Bandoneon: Victor Villena Violin: Daniel Hoffman Clarinet: Andre Campanella Concert filmed by RAI in Mantova, Italy “A Yiddishe Kind“ Text by Hannah Haytin This song was written after the dreadful slaughter of children in the ghettos and concentration camps in 1943. Mothers smuggled their children out of the Ghettos and gave them to non Jewish houses to abandon them and give them a chance to survive. “Especially as a postwar German native, married to a Jewish man here in NY since 20 years, I am eternally sensitive and tortured by the history of the Holocaust. It is my responsibility and utmost ethical longing to honor the culture of the Jewish people and stimulate the dialog about the terrible past . This is a mission that I have adopted already in 1987 when I became the protagonist of the big recordings series on DECCA “Entartete Music“ that presented the Jewish composers and their music catalog banned by the Nazies. With SONGS FOR ETERNITY this mission continues and finds its most touching extension. I am overwhelmed by the stories behind each of the songs. I studied a most unique book, a song collection by Vevel Pasternak from 1948, that gathers heartbreaking songs from the Ghettos and Concentration Camps as well as the songbook of Ilse Weber, finally published by her husband in Israel in the 90s long after he survived Auschwitz. Both music collections were given to me by my dear friend Orly Beigel who is half Mexican, half Israeli and a child of a Holocaust Survivor. In 2015 I met Francesco Lotoro in Rome .He had dedicated many years to the research of music written in the concentration camps. It was an honor to present some of his collections with him playing the piano at our concerts.“ - Ute Lemper