May 6, 2000
   Music at Site of Nazi Camp Ignites Protest
   By ROGER COHEN

   BERLIN, May 5 -- The idea behind bringing the Vienna Philharmonic to
   play Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the site of the former Nazi camp
   in Mauthausen, Austria, was to promote reconciliation at the dawn of
   a new century.  But in Jorg Haider's Austria, the plan has divided
   the country and sparked anguished debate.

   Elie Wiesel has canceled his plans to attend the concert on Sunday
   because of the presence of Mr. Haider's rightist Freedom Party in
   the government, and critics of the idea have sharpened their attacks
   on a performance they call an insult to memory rather than a means
   to transcend the past.

   "Anything that changes this unique slaughterhouse on Austrian soil
   into a concert house is tasteless to say the least," said Marta
   Halpert, director of the central European office of the Anti-Defamation
   League in Vienna.  "The notion of Philharmonic musicians in striped
   pants sitting in the quarry where so many died is grotesque."

   More than 100,000 people died at Mauthausen between 1939 and 1945.
   Many of them perished after being driven to a state of skeletal
   exhaustion through slave labor in the stone quarry at the site.  The
   camp was used primarily for political opponents of Hitler, although
   many Jews ended up there after the "death marches" of the war's end.

   The controversy has been sharpened by the particular history of the
   Vienna Philharmonic, which performed Beethoven's "Fidelio" at the
   express request of Hermann Goring 10 days after the Anschluss in
   1938.  The orchestra harbored many openly Nazi members, responded
   with equanimity to the deportation to death camps of six Jewish
   members and for decades after the war turned a same blind eye to
   these events, as did most Austrians.

   But Clemens Hellsberg, the Philharmonic's president, who has done
   much to throw belated light on the orchestra's dark years under
   Hitler's Reich, has defended the concert as a sign of hope for a new
   millennium and an educational gesture.

   "We must sensitize the eyes and ears and especially the hearts of
   people to need and misery in this world," he said in a recent interview
   with Die Presse.  When the orchestra was criticized at a performance
   in Paris shortly after Mr. Haider entered government in February,
   he pointed to the Mauthausen event as proof of its credentials.

   Sir Simon Rattle, the British conductor who will soon take over from
   Claudio Abbado at the Berlin Philharmonic, will conduct the performance,
   one that has led Sir Simon to a great deal of soul searching.  He
   declined to be interviewed, but earlier this year he told The Guardian
   that in the end silence was not an option for a musician offered such
   a rare opportunity.

   "I think we will be reaching into ourselves to try to express what
   is necessary through the music," he said then.  "When the alternative
   is silence, there isn't really an alternative for a musician."

   Sir Simon added: "It's retreat or resist, and now is the time to
   resist.  To do anything else would play into the hands of reaction
   and racism."

   The Viennese-born conductor Rudolf Schwarz, who survived Auschwitz,
   was one of Sir Simon's chief mentors and his educator in the reality
   of the Holocaust.  Sir Simon seems to believe that the concert is
   consistent with Mr. Schwarz's lifelong determination to bear witness
   and so ensure that there is never again a Mauthausen on European
   soil.

   The idea for the concert originally came from Leon Zelman, a Jew from
   Vienna who survived Auschwitz and Mauthausen.  He now leads an
   organization that tries to draw Jews expelled in 1938 and their
   descendants back to the city.

   "The dead of Mauthausen were mainly freedom fighters who died for a
   certain vision of Europe, and on the eve of a new millennium I wanted
   to do something for this dream of a new Europe," he said.  "The Ninth
   Symphony is the hymn of Europe."

   Mr. Haider's Freedom Party, a coalition partner in the Austrian
   government, has taken a clear stance against further European
   integration.  It has also criticized the Uberfremdung -- a word dear
   to the Nazis that roughly means over-foreignerization -- of Austria.

   Mr. Zelman said that no one from the government had been invited to
   the event because of the Freedom Party's presence.  Mr. Haider has
   generally avoided mentioning the concert, as have the ministers.

   Explaining his decision not to attend, Mr. Wiesel said earlier this
   year, "In a country where there is a Mauthausen, there should not be
   a Haider." But he has sent a message that will be read before the
   concert asking the question: What turned "good fathers and loyal
   husbands" into coldblooded Nazi murderers?

   Because the camp is the Interior Ministry's responsibility, it has
   fallen to the uninvited government to prepare the quarry for the
   concert, employing engineers to improve the acoustics.  More than
   7,000 people are expected to attend, and video screens for live
   transmission have been set up in Vienna, Linz and Innsbruck.

   "This is the worst sort of event culture, like taking the three tenors
   to the Baths of Caracalla," said Ms. Halpert.  "You can hear the
   screams in the quarry.  You should not make any other sounds."

   Her stance has been broadly supported by Helmut Edelmayr, who leads
   the Austrian Association of Prison Camps.  He will take part in a
   ceremony before the concert commemorating the 55th anniversary of
   the liberation of the camp.

   "The survivors see this place as a de facto graveyard," he said.
   "And in graveyards such events are not held."

Ah, the power of music...

Dave
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