I remember six years ago being in Tarifa — on the southernmost coast of Spain, a 30-minute ferry ride to Tangier, Morocco — and being tempted to cross continents.
Last year, Howard Teichman, the artistic director of the West Coast Jewish Theatre (WCJT), stood before the audience applauding the final performance of “The Whipping Man” and sorrowfully announced there would be no future plays — there simply was no more money in the kitty.
In the old days, the conductor was king. Fritz Reiner, George Szell and Arturo Toscanini, for example, were leaders in the style of the film “Whiplash,” notorious for abusing musicians who didn’t meet their demands. But Joshua Weilerstein is one of a new breed of gentler, kinder conductors.
As the transport from Tacova, Czechoslovakia (then called Tecso, Hungary), pulled up to the Birkenau platform in late May 1944, the doors of the cattle cars slammed open.
Every morning in 1936, Anne Forchheimer would bicycle to school, over a bridge in the German town of Coburg.
Snow brings a strange silence. No more so than in the vastness of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where on Jan. 27 we all began several months of remembering the unfolding of the liberation of the Nazi camps 70 years ago.
Although it was more than a decade ago, I still remember the phone call. The excited voice at the other end that went on and on regardless of whether I uttered a response.
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