March 21, 2001

Songs of The Holocaust Are Focal Point For Remembrance To Be Held At Ramapo College

Mahwah — "The Undying Flame: Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust," a concert/lecture presentation by Jerry Silverman, will be the focal point of this year's Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) observance by the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey. The remembrance is scheduled Tuesday, April 17 at 7 p.m. in the Adler Theater of the Angelica and Russ Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts.

Silverman, an accomplished musicologist, folksinger and author, will delve into the musical legacy of the Shoah (Nazi Germany's war of annihilation against the Jews). He will discuss songs and ballads from that experience, play several of them from documentary tapes and sing another half-dozen or so to his own guitar accompaniment.

The author of many historical texts, songbooks and instructional manuals, Silverman embarked on the trail of Holocaust music as a logical progression from his work on Yiddish music. His journey has taken him to anthologies in libraries and survivors in their living rooms. Each time, he has provided translations and arrangements of his own. In addition to the surprisingly large number of works he has found in German, Silverman has collected songs in French, Norwegian, Czech, Magyar, Serbo-Croatian and some 10 other languages. Many of these remarkable testimonials to human fortitude and creativity were hitherto unknown. The results of his labors will be published in a book, The Undying Flame: Ballads and Songs from the Holocaust, to be published in the fall by Syracuse University Press.

Founded in 1980, the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies is an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, located on the Ramapo College campus. It encourages and assists persons of all ages in learning the history and lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides in the hope that through education such tragedies can be prevented from occurring again.

For more information, contact Dr. Michael A. Riff, director of the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Ramapo College, (201) 684-7409.