‘Someone Else is on Your Mind for a Long Time" by Willy Rosen [Rosenbaum] (1894 – 1944)

Описание: Performed at JNF UK's Notes of Hope Concert on Sunday 15 April 2018.

The Compositions "Someone Else is on Your Mind for a Long Time" by Willy Rosen, a singer, composer, actor and comedian. Rosen was born on 18 July 1894 in Magdeburg, Germany. He was a successful musician with an impressive record and wrote music for many movies between the years 1928-1934.

Nurenberg laws, which prohibited Jewish musicians from performing in front of a non-Jewish audience, put an end to Rosen’s prolific activities in Germany and he immigrated to Holland, where he established a theatre together with other Jewish artists who emigrated from Berlin. But even there, Rosen and his colleagues could not have the peace to create. In 1942 the theatre was shut down and converted into a gathering point for Jews to be sent to concentration and death camps.

Rosen managed to hide for a while, but in the spring of 1943 he was caught and banished to Westerbork concentration camp. Later on, he was sent to Theresienstadt alongside many Jewish scholars, artists, writers, musicians and scientists, who ran a rich cultural life in the ghetto. In October 1944, a few days before they were supposed to perform the opera "Death's Resignation" by the Jewish composer Viktor Ullmann, most of the artists were sent to Auschwitz where they were executed in the gas chambers, all in one day. Among them was Willy Rosen.

A moment before being sent to the gas chambers, Rosen and his friend, the composer Max Ehrlich, asked one of the cabaret performers, the singer Getty Kantor, to smuggle out a folder with their compositions. For over 60 years the folder has been forgotten, gathering dust and mold in an attic at her son’s house in Holland. Until one day in the 80's he tidied up the attic and found the folder. After removing the dust and the damage time caused it, he handed it over to the Dutch Theatre Institution for inspection, where they immediately realised the great importance, both historical and musical, of these materials.