In 1997, Martin Goldsmith, best known as the 10-year host for NPR's classical music program "Performance Today," was at the Baltimore Museum of Art to introduce a film. Mark Crispin Miller, director of the film series, asked him some questions prior to introducing him.
Goldsmith said his parents had played in an all-Jewish orchestra in Nazi Germany, that his father had left Germany for safety in Sweden but returned to his homeland to be near the woman who would be his wife — and that they managed to get out of Germany and sail to the United States just in time, in June 1941.
Miller's response was: "That's some story. You ought to write a book."
That's when the seed was planted in Goldsmith's mind for "The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany," which was recently published.
During an interview from Washington, D.C., Goldsmith talked about "the enormous tree growing up through the roof" in his house when he was a boy — his parents' unpleasant memories of Nazi Germany.
"Some people have said to me they knew about the Holocaust in broad strokes, but viewing it through one family helped them to understand it much more. The way the restrictions and curfews on the Jews grew slowly, developing one by one.
"People have also told me they had a tree growing in their house, too. Their parents didn't talk about the painful things. So I think of this as both a history book and a family book."
Goldsmith portrays the evolution of the anti-Semitic movement: "The Jews being kicked out of a symphony orchestra, being told they could no longer practice law, that they could no longer own radios, that their drivers' licenses were revoked, the wearing of the yellow star to identify them as Jews — then the beginning of the transports east.
"The Nazis were just figuring it out as they went. 'Here is our plan for the Jews — we'll put them in a very unattractive resort by themselves because we can't get rid of them.' Not til later did they say, 'We can do something about this. We can eliminate the Jews.' "
Goldsmith, whose undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University was in history, began his research at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. where he heard about an exhibition on the Kulturbund, the Jewish orchestra in which his parents played. He made three trips to Germany, researched the archives, visited his parents' home towns and met many helpful and friendly people.
With the help of a number of primary source materials, he produced a book now judged to be the most extensive account of the Kulturbund in the English language.
Nevertheless, the topic was very sensitive, not only to his father but to many other people who knew the problems up close. Goldsmith, formerly an actor, remembered some good advice he received once from an acting coach: "If you do a sad play, there is no need to be sad yourself. Just speak your lines honestly. If the audience is involved, they will be sad. You are the conduit."
Goldsmith did not sit down to tell a moving story. He just tried to be honest and direct.
The Kulturbund, an all-Jewish orchestra in Berlin, was, in Goldsmith's opinion, "a completely cynical operation from the Nazi point of view. It was a way to deflect criticism from the rest of the world for the way they treated Jews, but it was also a way to get the Jews out of the mainstream of German life. If they're off in a corner somewhere putting on concerts and plays, it will be OK."
But for the members of the orchestra, it was a safe haven, at least for awhile. Goldsmith's father, Gunther (later, in the United States, George), actually left Germany for Sweden, but he missed the girl he wanted to marry, Rosemarie, so he returned "for music and for love."
Following their marriage, George and Rosemarie played together in the Kulturbund, a top-notch orchestra. He played the flute and she played the viola.
Today, Goldsmith recognizes this was "a romantic and foolhardy thing to do. I'm not sure my father knew he was foolhardy, because no one knew what to do. Some people ask me, 'Why didn't your mom just join your dad in Sweden?' It's a good question, but there was no orchestra in Sweden then, and music was a very important part of their lives. The Kulturbund was a first-class orchestra. These people did extraordinary work.
"I don't know. If someone had said to my father, 'You're going up the chimney,' he might have paused, but no one knew then what was going to happen. Even from my comfortable position in the present, the Holocaust is still a little hard to believe. How could anyone predict the Holocaust?"
Writing the book has proved a way to open communication between Goldsmith and his father. All during his growing-up years, his parents had not discussed it. His mother died of cancer in 1984, but his father has continued in good health. "We established a way for us to talk, and we have done so since the book was written. It was good for him because he has heard from people around the country, saying they were happy with it. He was saddled with enormous guilt. He felt he had done something shameful in surviving those terrible years."
One tragic result of his parents' move to the United States is his father's decision to give up music and go into retailing. Goldsmith believes abandoning his beloved musical career was his father's way of atoning for his escape from the Holocaust while so many others died. When his father read about Goldsmith's view in the finished book, "He said he could not disagree with it."
This story is also the author's story. "It is my life, too. Writing the book was my attempt to move out from the shadow of that tree. I have done that to a certain extent. There is certainly a lot more sun in my life than before I wrote the book."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com