The Stirring Documentary “Defiant Requiem:
Saturday, December 14, 2019
7:30PM - 9:30PM
Location: Social Hall
This stirring documentary uses dramatization, archival footage and animation to portray an extraordinary act of moral resistance against the Third Reich during WWII. After Rafael Schächter, a young Czech conductor, was imprisoned in Terezin in 1941, he recruited 150 prisoners and taught them Verdi’s Requiem. The inmates presented the music many times at the camp, with the last taking place in June 1944 before high-ranking SS officers visiting from Berlin and the International Red Cross. Although the concert was used by the Nazis as a charade to show that the prisoners were being treated benevolently, Schächter used the Requiem’s text to “sing to the Nazis what they could not say to them.”
Admission is free. RSVP requested to underonetent.org.