I'm currently reading a book called *Inextinguishable Symphony* by Martin
Goldsmith, whom I have often heard on Public Radio and who I didn't now was
the son of Guenther and Rosemarie Goldschmidt who got out of Nazi Germany
barely in time.

His parents met as musicians in the "Kulturbund" (Kubu) which was
established shortly after Hitler came to power as an organization under
whose auspices Jewish musicians and artists (none of whom were any longer
permitted to perform in regular theaters, concert halls, operas, etc.)
could perform for exclusively Jewish audiences, under strict censorship
and surveillance by the Nazi authorities.  Its roster reads almost like a
"Who's Who" of post-WWI German artists (who happened to be Jewish), many
(like William Steinberg, Julius Pruewer, Ernst Drucker, and Max Kowalski),
but alas not all, of whom managed eventually to escape the Nazis.

The artists were not permitted to perform works by Germans.  Thus
Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms were verboten.  Mendelssohn, a non-Aryan
(although a Lutheran) was OK, as were other Jewish composers, and composers
from outside Germany.  With the Anschluss of Austria into the Greater
German Reich, Mozart, Haydn, and Schubert also made the forbidden list.
Strangely enough, Handel was long tolerated, not because he was thought
English, but because, having written works like "Israel in Egypt" and
"Judas Maccabaeus", he was believed to be Jewish!

A further idiocy that would be funny if it weren't so pathetic was the
fate of one Franz Calvelli-Adorno (of whose relationship, if any to the
better known Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, I'm unaware), was discovered by
the Gestapo to have had two Aryan grandparents, changing his status from
Full Jew to Half Jew, and thus no longer qualified to retain his position
in the Kulturbund, where he was principal of the second violin section.
His friends and colleagues gave him a going away present, a book called
*Das Atlantisbuch der Musik*, a collection of essays about music by such
notable figures as Edwin Fischer, Wilhelm Fiurtwaengler, and George
Kulenkampff, w/ an introduction by Richard Strauss.  The conductor and
31 orchestra members signed the book in a fond expression of farewell.
As Goldsmith states, "Today that list of autographs is a haunting reminder
of an unbelievable and absurd occasion."

As one lucky enough to have had parents w/ the foresight and ingenuity to
get us out of Germany before the Anschluss, Crystal Night, and the ensuing
horrors, and the closing of all possibilities of emigration, I'm reading
this book with the recurring feeling of one who has been shot at and
missed.

Walter Meyer