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A moving but problematic concert for Holocaust Remembrance Day
Barletta, a coastal city in Puglia, Italy, is an unexpected place for a massive archive of concentration camp music. Yet one of its citizens, Francesco Lotoro, has spent decades amassing one of the world’s largest collections of this kind.
On Jan. 27, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Maestro Lotoro led a concert of this music in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Lotoro’s collection includes not only music from the Nazi camps and ghettoes, but also the camps of the USSR and Hirohito’s Japan, and other sites of mass internment.
Amid a linguistically, tonally and thematically diverse array of works performed, six were Yiddish songs, one of which had its American premiere.
On entering the Kennedy Center, I immediately encountered a rather menacing photo of the current president, along with those of his vice president and their wives. I rushed to the ticket window, got my ticket, passed through security, and approached the Eisenhower Theater.
President Eisenhower’s bust gazes down upon visitors as they enter. It occurred to me that this was a fitting mekabl ponim (welcome) for a concert of music written by martyrs and survivors of the Holocaust, given then-General Eisenhower’s prescient campaign to film, document and expose the Nazi camps.
I was torn away from this musing by the ten-minute warning chime — a descending arpeggiated major chord (do-sol-mi-do) — and made my way inside.
Five minutes before the advertised start-time (7:30 PM), the house was still sparsely seated. Given the political fallout from the president’s takeover of the Kennedy Center — I wondered if this concert would be a casualty of the ongoing audience boycott. (Since the concert, the president has announced a two-year closure of the Kennedy Center for renovations.)
At showtime, the house lights were still up, and audience members were still filing in. But when the lights finally dimmed around 7:45, the house was mostly full.
The curtain rose on Lotoro seated at the piano. He performed a wordless lullaby by Polish composer Adam Kopyciński, and without waiting for applause, rose and exited stage right. The co-organizer of the concert, Counter Extremism Project CEO and current UN Ambassador Mark Wallace, then walked on to give introductory remarks.
The Counter Extremism Project (CEP)’s webpage described the concert as “an external rental […] not produced by the Kennedy Center.” Technically true, but CEP is headed by Trump’s UN ambassador, and some of the remarks between pieces, as well as some of the speakers, indicated a partisan agenda. More on that later.
The first song of the night was the tragic Yiddish love song “Friling” (Spring), composed in the Vilna Ghetto by Avrom Brudno with lyrics by Shmerke Kaczerginski. Written after the death of Kaczerginski’s wife Barbara, “Friling” has been recorded by many artists, including the great Chava Alberstein. Lotoro’s rich but never overpowering orchestration, together with baritone Angelo De Leonardis’s expressive interpretation, were a potent combination.
Like Lotoro’s collection, the concert also featured songs written in other camp systems, in other languages, by other peoples. Lotoro has coined the term “concentrationary music” to encompass music composed in any site of mass internment. Friling was followed by several Polish works, a stunning Roma song, and one English-language serenade by an American POW.
The next Yiddish selection was Iber Fremde Vegn (Across Foreign Roads) composed around 1942 by Leibu Levin, who was imprisoned in a Soviet camp for 15 years. After an archival recording of Levin singing the song, with Yiddish lyrics projected above the stage, singer Paolo Candido rendered the lyrics in a crystal-clear Yiddish, accompanied by an appropriately restrained orchestration for a more contemplative song of exile.
Candido’s robust voice, together with expert use of gesture, masterfully conveyed the song’s themes and imagery, though no translations were provided for any of the evening’s songs. It was clear to me, at any rate, that the singers understood what they were singing, despite not being Yiddish speakers. (I later confirmed this with Lotoro.)
Then came Dort In Dem Lager (There In the Camp). I knew two nearly identical versions of this song from 1946 and 1948, but Lotoro worked with a quite different version, recalled half a century later, in 1996.
In my opinion, the 1946 version is the most melodically and lyrically complete, while the one recalled in 1996 collapsed the three verses of the “original” into one. Its rhyme scheme works, but the story it tells has internal inconsistencies. After the concert, I expressed my opinion to Lotoro. “I didn’t use that version at all,” he said of my favored 1946 version. “I completely disregarded it.”
But, as he explained, “I’m not a philologist. I’m a musicologist.” As he put it, the version he chose to arrange and perform “doesn’t cancel the original, philological version.”
Admittedly, the arrangement sung that night by soprano Anna Maria Pansini, accompanied by Lotoro on the piano, is musically the most interesting and complex, because the survivor who recalled it mixed in two lines of a second, unknown song. Lotoro’s spare, intimate arrangement— just piano and voice— counterbalanced the particularly heart-wrenching text and melody. “Sometimes, you have to feel whether a song needs piano or full orchestral accompaniment,” Lotoro told me later in the green room. “It’s important never to exaggerate.”
The song’s most powerful line is its last: Hot shoyn rakhmones, gotenyu. (Have mercy already, dear God.) Presumably, few attendees understood the Yiddish, but the anguish expressed in the song was still palpable.
Next came a US premiere: a song from Birkenau entitled In Oyshvitser Flamen (In The Flames of Auschwitz), also sung by Pansini.
The accompaniment was instrumentally richer, but still appropriately understated. One particularly devastating verse translates to:
On holy Motzei Shabbos at night / When we bless the Creator of fire’s lights / Pieces of flesh / Fall from me / Oh, when I / when I recall / How Jews burned / In the flames of Auschwitz.
Closing out the evening was a nearly-lost Yiddish song sung by actor and director Jack Garfein, Tsi Iz Mayn Harts Keyn Harts Fun Keyn Mentshn? (Is My Heart the Heart of a Human?) Archival footage of Garfein singing the song for Lotoro — the only source for the song, because the boy who composed it was killed shortly after Garfein heard him sing it— was shown prior to De Leonardis’ performance. The first two lines translate to:
Is my heart the heart of a human being? / Do I have the right to live, or not?
Garfein’s voice is faint, but the melody is clearly in a minor key, and deeply melancholy. In Lotoro’s interpretation, however, the melody was in a major key, and his orchestration made the song into an expression of hope rather than a lament of its anonymous composer’s dehumanization by the Nazis. The music was beautiful and uplifting, but emotionally dissonant with the words. There are uplifting Yiddish songs from the WWII period, but Tsi Iz Mayn Harts isn’t among them.
For an encore, all three singers performed a rousing rendition of Der Shtrasdenhofer Hymn, a Yiddish march song from the Strasdenhof forced labor camp. The rather ironic lyrics, however, bitterly complain about the camp, where “one must march and sing.” The singers clapped to the beat, and the audience clapped along too, apparently unaware of how inappropriate it was to do so.
When I asked Lotoro, a Jew by choice, how he works with Yiddish lyrics, he said he’d never had much difficulty with Yiddish due to its similarity to German, but that he’d also had significant help with the Yiddish from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s music curator Bret Werb, and from others. He also shared that the three singers, with whom he’s worked for many years, did philological research of their own, spending significant time working with the Yiddish, Polish, and Roma texts before rehearsals. “They don’t get the score two days before, or something like that,” he told me. “I send it to them months in advance.”
Many of the introductory remarks between songs focused on voices being recovered, unsilenced, given new life. But neither lyrics nor song titles were made comprehensible to the largely anglophone American audience. What good is being heard without being understood?
Music may be the universal language, but its vocabulary is small.
Many of the evening’s remarks by non-survivor presenters focused on extremism in the abstract without any mention of far-right nationalism, or of other genocides. An Iranian dissident spoke movingly of the Iranian government’s brutal repression of her people and its sponsorship of anti-Jewish terrorism. A Cuban-American former Republican congresswoman spoke of fleeing a communist dictatorship as a child. Yet not one word was said about China’s ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs of East Turkestan. At an event organized by Trump’s UN Ambassador, this omission could not be an oversight.
It almost seemed as if there were two programs occupying the same stage that evening: one about human dignity in the face of unimaginable brutalization and mass-murder, and another about the particular extremist political ideologies that this administration has made its enemies.
For his part, Maestro Lotoro — a rather self-effacing man — didn’t say a word during the concert. He allowed the music to speak for itself, though much was lost in non-translation.
Lotoro is far from the only collector or interpreter of Holocaust music, and he has been working with “concentrationary” music longer than I have been alive. Besides, much of this precious heritage is widely accessible online. So, if I believe an interpretation misses the mark here or there, someone else can put forth another one more “faithful” to the original material.
“The real goal,” Lotoro told me, “is for all this music to go into circulation around the world.” Thanks to Lotoro’s prolific and artistically top-notch recordings— including a 24-volume album— that seems likely.
The post A moving but problematic concert for Holocaust Remembrance Day appeared first on The Forward.
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Israelis and Americans deserve to know why they are still at war
Israelis have once again been asked to live under the shadow of war. Sirens and missiles punctuate sleepless nights. Families sleep beside safe rooms. Children measure their days between alarms.
People will endure that, when they believe there is a purpose behind the sacrifice.
Yet three weeks into the current confrontation with Iran, Israel’s government hasn’t offered anything resembling such clarity. Nor has that of the United States. And as the costs of war accrue in both countries — with Americans worrying about forces deployed across the region, and paying the price of the conflict at the gas pump — citizens of both countries deserve something basic from their leaders: a direct, compelling explanation of what this war is supposed to achieve.
In a democracy, citizens who are sending their children to shelters and their soldiers to the front absolutely have the right to know the objectives of a war. Yes, you cannot reveal operational details that could endanger pilots, intelligence sources, or soldiers in the field.
But explaining the purpose of a war is not the same thing as revealing tactics. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump aren’t exhibiting prudence by keeping things, as the Forward‘s Arno Rosenfeld wrote, “incoherent.” Instead, they’re showing contempt for those they govern.
The hubris would be troubling even if either government in question enjoyed broad public trust. But neither Netanyahu nor Trump are leaders who command such confidence. And the arrogance that has infected even officials under them reflects a deeper pattern that has long defined both men’s leadership: an extraordinary sense of entitlement to power.
An Israel defined by hubris
Many Israelis believe that Netanyahu bends the truth routinely and will do almost anything to remain in power. Under those circumstances, demanding blind faith in this war is insulting.
Consider the extraordinary elasticity of the government’s claims. In June, after the earlier 12-day confrontation with Iran, Netanyahu declared that Israel had pushed back Iran’s missile and nuclear threats “for generations.”
If anyone made the mistake of believing him at the time, it is now obvious that he was lying. Iran still possesses missiles, which we know, because they have rained down on Israel throughout this war. If this conflict is now necessary to confront the very same dangers, the public deserves an explanation of what exactly happened to the supposed “generations” of security their leader had promised.
Yet instead of engaging with tough questions from the press about why Israel engaged in this war, what its goals are, and when it will end, Netanyahu has opted to exclusively discuss the war on friendly platforms. There are social media videos produced by his team, which are pure propaganda; the rare stage-managed “news conference,” usually with the few questioners selected in advance; and a studious avoidance of interviews with the Israeli media — with the sole exception of the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14.
Incredibly, when asked by a reporter from Haaretz a few days ago what the goals of the war were — and why no explanation has been offered to the citizens of the country — Government Secretary Yossi Fuchs actually had the temerity to respond that, in his eyes, citizens don’t need to know about those goals. Some have been set, he said, but they are confidential.
This posture invites, of course, even more suspicion.
Muddled American messaging
If Netanyahu says too little, Trump, on the American side, possibly says too much.
He speaks constantly about the war, yet always seems to struggle with precision or coherence.
One day he suggests the conflict could last a long time. The next he says he thinks it may end soon. When asked about terrorism that could follow escalation, he shrugs that “some people will die.”
This is not surprising; Trump’s rhetoric on these things has always been belated, confused and focused on spectacle. Within hours of the bizarre American seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — a reprehensible figure but still the head of a sovereign state — Trump appeared on television explaining that the U.S. needed access to Venezuelan oil.
With short-term operations like that in Venezuela, Trump’s inability to explain why the U.S. needed to engage, and outline what Americans can expect going forward, was less glaring. Now, as he waffles between demanding NATO allies come to aid the war and insisting their help isn’t needed; bizarrely declares the war will end “when I feel it in my bones”; and makes clear that the war was initiated with no strategic foresight, it’s impossible to ignore
So Americans, like Israelis, are left struggling to understand what exactly their government is trying to accomplish. And while in Israel the war is still broadly supported — so great is the anger at the Iranian regime, and so effective has been Israel’s missile defense — that is hardly the case in the U.S.
The blame game
The risks of a war defined by ever-moving goalposts and a deliberately obscure timeframe are obvious and terrifying. Just look at the war in Gaza.
That conflict dragged on for nearly two years, accompanied by repeated declarations that Hamas would soon be eliminated. Today, Hamas still exists. Yet the government has offered no serious accounting of that reality. On the way to this endgame, in which the status quo has ended up preserved but with Gaza in ruins, Netanyahu repeatedly blocked off-ramps. He was clearly indifferent to the widespread perception that he was using the continuation of the war to avoid accountability: he explicitly and shamelessly argued that spectacular breakdown on Oct. 7 could not be investigated while the war continued.
In fact, he is using the exact same playbook in this new war, arguing last week — with Trump’s support — that Israeli President Isaac Herzog should issue him a pardon in his ongoing corruption trial so that he can focus on the war.
Some Israelis now genuinely fear that prolonged emergency conditions could become politically convenient. Netanyahu’s critics openly speculate that a monumental national crisis might provide justification to delay or manipulate elections — as Netanyahu is obsessed with remaining in power and is badly behind in the polls.
In the U.S., this fumbling has opened the door to an alarming new reality: one in which Israel and its international supporters are blamed for dragging the U.S. into war. On Tuesday, Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned over the war with a public letter making unproven allegations that Trump fell prey to an Israeli “misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform.” There is a clear risk that such rhetoric, fueled by the sense of directionlessness in this war, will increase already surging antisemitism.
The paradox of justification
Netanyahu and Trump’s failure to clearly justify the war does not mean that the Iranian regime deserves indulgence.
Tehran has brutalized its own citizens for decades and exported violence throughout the Middle East. Through Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite militias in Iraq, it has helped fuel conflicts that have cost countless lives. The regime has given the world many reasons to wish for its disappearance.
For the past month I have been arguing relentlessly that the Iranian regime has forfeited any claim to sympathy and that its actions have justified the Israeli and U.S. attack.
A long war determined to bring the regime to its knees may not be fundamentally unjustified. But requiring blind faith in the leaders prosecuting that war is.
The post Israelis and Americans deserve to know why they are still at war appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Official Resigns Over Iran War, Blames Israel
Mattie Neretin – CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
A senior U.S. counterterrorism official resigned Tuesday in protest of President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran, accusing Israel of playing an outsized role in pushing the United States into conflict.
Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said he could not support the war, arguing Tehran posed “no imminent threat” to the United States. But it was Kent’s broader assertion, that pressure from Israel and pro-Israel voices influenced the decision to go to war, that drew swift pushback from the White House and national security experts.
In his resignation, Kent also drew parallels to the Iraq War, suggesting that similar dynamics shaped both conflicts, arguing that Israel pushed the US into the conflict. His comments revived long-running debates about how U.S. intelligence and foreign alliances factor into decisions to use military force, though many officials and analysts have rejected such comparisons as misleading.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote in his resignation letter.
Kent further claimed that he lost his wife in a “war manufactured by Israel.” Kent’s wife, Shannon Kent, died in 2019 when an ISIS suicide bomber detonated an explosive device during a U.S. military operation during the Syrian Civil War. Kent’s assertion suggests that Israel started the Syrian Civil War is completely unfounded. However, the notion that Israel controls the ISIS terror group is a popular conspiracy online.
The Trump administration forcefully disputed Kent’s claims, maintaining that the decision to strike Iran was based on credible intelligence about threats to U.S. forces and interests in the region. Trump dismissed Kent as “weak on security,” defending the operation as necessary to deter Iranian aggression and protect American personnel and allies.
Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary, lambasted Kent’s letter as inaccurate .
“The absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable. President Trump has been remarkably consistent and has said for DECADES that Iran can NEVER possess a nuclear weapon,” she wrote.
National security experts and former officials also criticized Kent’s framing, arguing that it oversimplifies the policymaking process and risks promoting narratives that inaccurately portray Israel as driving U.S. military decisions. They emphasize that while Israel is a close ally that shares intelligence and strategic concerns, particularly regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions and support for proxy groups, decisions to go to war are made by U.S. leadership based on American intelligence assessments.
Israel has long warned about the threat posed by Iran’s regional activities, including its backing of armed groups hostile to both Israeli and U.S. interests. Those concerns are broadly shared across multiple U.S. administrations and within the intelligence community, regardless of political party.
Kent’s resignation marks the most significant internal break so far over the Iran conflict and highlights growing divisions within the administration and across Washington. While some critics of the war have echoed his concerns about the lack of an imminent threat, others have expressed alarm at his decision to center Israel in his critique, warning that such claims can distort public understanding of how U.S. foreign policy decisions are made.
Kent came under fire during his confirmation process over his reported connections to white supremacists Nick Fuentes and Greyson Arnold. Kent admitted that he had conversations with Fuentes over social media strategy. However, Kent later distanced himself from Fuentes and repudiated his views.
Kent also holds other unorthodox foreign policy viewpoints, such as a relatively forgiving posture towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In April 2022, following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Kent argued that Putin was “very reasonable” and accused the US foreign policy establishment of aggravating Russia into war.
Kent’s comments on Tuesday drew widespread backlash from many who accused him of peddling antisemitic tropes. Ilan Goldberg, Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer of liberal pro-Israel organization J-Street, praised Kent for leaving the administration, but added “the antisemitic stuff in here blaming Israel for the Iraq war and a secret conspiracy of the media and Israelis to deceive Trump into going to war with Iran is ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes.”
“Donald Trump is the President of the United States and he is the one ultimately responsible for sending American troops into harms way,” Goldberg added.
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UK Hate Crime Prosecutions Reveal Stark Disparities Between Muslim and Jewish Victims
Demonstrators attend the “Lift The Ban” rally organised by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, Sept. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
Hate crimes against Muslims in the United Kingdom are nearly twice as likely to result in prosecution as those targeting Jews, newly released figures show, exposing a striking imbalance in how justice is ultimately delivered.
According to data compiled by the British Home Office, the government department responsible for policing and security, figures on hate crime offences recorded over the past year show that Muslim victims of Islamophobic attacks were 76 percent more likely to see their attackers prosecuted than Jewish victims of antisemitic attacks.
Across the United Kingdom, 6.7 percent of hate crimes targeting Muslims led to a charge or summons — around one in 15 cases — compared with just 3.8 percent of offences against Jewish victims, or roughly one in 26, over the period from April 2024 to March 2025.
The gap is particularly stark in certain offences. Religiously aggravated assaults without injury against Muslims were over six times more likely to lead to prosecution, with 6.3 percent of cases resulting in charges compared with just 1.1 percent for Jewish victims.
Similarly, racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage was around four times more likely to result in charges, at 3.4 percent versus 0.8 percent.
Although 4,478 religious hate crimes were reported against Muslims compared with 2,873 against Jews, the smaller size of the Jewish population means such offences are far more concentrated and statistically significant. By raw population, the contrast is stark: around 3.9 million Muslims live in England and Wales, compared with 287,360 Jews
The Home Office’s data also reveals that Jewish people are disproportionately targeted, experiencing religious hate crimes at a rate roughly ten times higher than Muslims.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) — the body responsible for bringing criminal cases in England and Wales — said comparing crime reports with prosecutions is difficult because cases can only proceed once police submit sufficient evidence for a charging decision.
According to the CPS, a record number of hate crime cases were referred by police last year, with 11,140 defendants prosecuted for racially flagged offences, resulting in a charge rate of 87.1 percent and a conviction rate of 85.2 percent.
In the UK, the Community Security Trust (CST) — a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters — recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents from January to June last year. This was the second-highest number of antisemitic crimes ever recorded by CST in the first six months of any year, following 2,019 incidents in the first half of 2024.