The man – a Holocaust survivor who wrote a moving musical memoir to cope with the horrors of war – has inspired a Canadian music legend and his documentary film producer wife and son to remind us all of the horrors of war.
At 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Am Shalom, An Evening of Music and Remembrance will raise money for a documentary about Polish-Canadian orchestra leader Leo Spellman, who wrote about his struggles and fears in the anti-Semitic era that killed millions of Jews and caused millions more to suffer.
Spellman, whose cousin’s memoirs are well-known in the Oscar-winning film The Pianist, wrote Rhapsody, a three-part musical composition while he lived in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany after the war ended.
He and his wife had managed to survive the war with the help of a Christian, who hid them for 18 months in a pad-locked apartment. Every day, they lived not knowing if they would survive to see another day or if the war would end. They lived in fear, afraid to light a fire to cook food.
While in hiding, he wrote down his thoughts and emotions. While in a Displaced Persons camp, he wrote music, Rhapsody.
“I was so moved when I heard the story, I felt I had to help,” said Marshall Green, a long-time Barrie municipal affairs lawyer.
So he worked with Am Shalom Congregation to not only share Spellman’s story as part of Holocaust Memorial Week, but to raise funds for a documentary that will help spread the incredible tale even further.
“My kids have no connection (to the Second World War), because their grandfathers are gone. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it,” said Green.
“Now with what’s happening in the world, and even south of the border, there is a lot of Islamophobia that is very reminiscent of the anti-Semitism in the 1930s.”
In 1939 when the Nazis arrived, Spellman and his family had to give up their house and were forced to live in a ghetto. In 1942, as the Nazis murdered 2,000 Jews in his town and sent another 12,000 to a concentration camp, Spellman and his wife went into hiding. With the help of a Christian, they lived for 18 months in a padlocked apartment until 1945.
Documentary producer David Hoffert, who is working with his mother Brenda, who is also a documentary specialist, on the project, began by focusing on the music.
They had connected with him to tell the story of Rhapsody, written in 1947 and first performed in a Displaced Persons camp, but left forgotten in a trunk for years, after Spellman asked Order of Canada musician (and Lighthouse co-founder) Paul Hoffert, to help him get Rhapsody recorded.
“He wrote Rhapsody to musically tell his story,” said the younger Hoffert, who will be in Barrie at Saturday’s event.
“The first part represents the Nazis coming in, its battles and the killing. The whole middle section is the sorrow and sadness representing his time of hiding. In the end, it’s actually liberation. It ends on a positive note, with some clever music and the joy of liberation. Right at the very end, there’s a short passage, the Hatikvah, now known as the Israeli national anthem, but this was written one year before Israel became a nation. It is the music of Jewish liberation.”
Spellman performed it with other musicians as they went from DP camp to DP camp. As the years passed, Spellman moved on to work on other music.
Eventually, the United States Holocaust Museum heard about it from a musician who helped present it half a century earlier. The museum encouraged Spellman to revive it and it was played in Washington and New York in 2000 and 2001.
Almost a decade later, Spellman decided he’d like to record it and he contacted Hoffert’s father, Paul, to help him add some music and get the finished piece recorded.
That’s when the mother-and-son filmmaking team decided the story of what inspired the music had to be told.
The piece premiered in Canada in 2012 at the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto, just a little more than two months before Spellman died at age 99.
Hoffert said he thought his work on the documentary was finishing.
“It was about a lost piece of music that was resurrected and performed with a triumph. We were just about to start editing.
“We went to his house with his daughter to see if we could find photographs or posters. While we were there, we found his diaries.
“It was amongst a bunch of papers that would have very likely been thrown out. It wasn’t among his prized photos.
“Once they were translated, we realized they were treasures. There’s only a handful of diaries of this ilk, the most famous being the Anne Frank diaries.
The experiences had to be included in the film, he said.
“Six million people were killed and of the few survivors, how many kept that (diary record)? It was because he was in hiding. One of the reasons the diaries are so gripping as compared to a memoir, in a memoir you know the ending. The Pianist talks about the terror,” said Hoffert.
“In a diary, you don’t know. Almost on a daily basis, he never knew if he was going to live until the next day or whether the war would end or who would win.”
To complete the documentary that been expanded to include memories from Spellman’s diaries, the Hofferts need to raise $250,000.
Saturday’s event will support the project.
“The story has to be told. On a personal note, it would be for the same reasons Leo’s music and diaries were almost lost. It would be awful if the movie were lost. It needs to be told,” said Hoffert.
Event details:
To help raise money to finish the last piece of the film, Order of Canada musician and co-founder of Lighthouse Paul Hoffert, jazz violinist Lenny Solomon and Ellington jazz vocalist Aura, will perform Saturday at a $40-per-ticket event marking the end of Holocaust Memorial Week.
Filmmakers David and Brenda Hoffert will also be on hand to answer questions about the project. Scenes from the film will also be shown.
The event also features the Am Shalom choir and refreshments from The North Restaurant.
Doors open at 7 p.m.
The Am Shalom Synagogue is located at 767 Huronia Rd.
