Since I first visited Mozart’s birthplace in Salzburg, while showing my parents around Central Europe during the 1990-91 holidays, I've been unable to forget his birthday.
I can also never forget that it's International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls on this date because it's the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - and I was there for the 50th anniversary in 1995. This year it happens that just in the last couple of days by old client from Israel has come up with some more Czech material on his great-grandfather, the one mentioned in the epilogue to my book. His ancestor, a rabbi, perished in Treblinka. On another occasion, about 15 years ago, I worked on a list of Holocaust victims for Columbus, Ohio's Beth Israel Synagogue. That congregation had "adopted" one from Dobříš, less than an hour outside Prague. Practically all its members died in the Holocaust. Part of my job was to get information on their deportations and so forth from the Jewish Museum in Prague, as well as to get their names together with all the diacritics in place for a silver Torah breastplate.
There's not much reason to associate the composer and the Polish town which has become so symbolic of the Holocaust. One might think of their historical connection to the Habsburg Empire - the town of Oświęcim (Auschwitz) was annexed by Austria in the First Partition of Poland in 1772. Salzburg was technically a Prince-Archbishopric of the Holy Roman Empire, which in my understanding means it owed fealty to the Habsburg rulers...
Another reason the date of 27 January comes up in my mind so often is that Mozart's Cafe in Columbus, Ohio holds yearly celebrations of the composer's birthday, which I attended as religiously as possible during my grad school years in that city.
Anyway, I don't have that much to add to the subject. Please do check out my posts from this date in years past:
2019 - Happy 263rd, Wolfi!
2020 - Remembering Auschwitz: 50 + 25
I can also never forget that it's International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls on this date because it's the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - and I was there for the 50th anniversary in 1995. This year it happens that just in the last couple of days by old client from Israel has come up with some more Czech material on his great-grandfather, the one mentioned in the epilogue to my book. His ancestor, a rabbi, perished in Treblinka. On another occasion, about 15 years ago, I worked on a list of Holocaust victims for Columbus, Ohio's Beth Israel Synagogue. That congregation had "adopted" one from Dobříš, less than an hour outside Prague. Practically all its members died in the Holocaust. Part of my job was to get information on their deportations and so forth from the Jewish Museum in Prague, as well as to get their names together with all the diacritics in place for a silver Torah breastplate.
There's not much reason to associate the composer and the Polish town which has become so symbolic of the Holocaust. One might think of their historical connection to the Habsburg Empire - the town of Oświęcim (Auschwitz) was annexed by Austria in the First Partition of Poland in 1772. Salzburg was technically a Prince-Archbishopric of the Holy Roman Empire, which in my understanding means it owed fealty to the Habsburg rulers...
Another reason the date of 27 January comes up in my mind so often is that Mozart's Cafe in Columbus, Ohio holds yearly celebrations of the composer's birthday, which I attended as religiously as possible during my grad school years in that city.
Anyway, I don't have that much to add to the subject. Please do check out my posts from this date in years past:
2019 - Happy 263rd, Wolfi!
2020 - Remembering Auschwitz: 50 + 25
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