The ordeal of some Jewish composers who were able to escape the Nazi persecution of the Jews did not end with the defeat of Hitler's Germany. Only a few years after the end of the war, an anti-Semitic campaign began in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, which lasted until Stalin's death in 1953. Many Jews were sentenced to prison or even death in sham trials, and countless others lost their livelihoods. Composers were also affected. Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996), for example, who fled from his home town of Warsaw to the USSR in 1939, was imprisoned in Moscow. The composer, pianist and professor at the Kiev Conservatory Matwey Gosenpud (1903-1961) was dismissed without notice in 1948 and went to Kazakhstan to escape imminent arrest. Evgeniya Yakhnina (1918-2000), who came from Kharkov and worked as a composition teacher at a Moscow music school, also lost her job and was excluded from musical life for five years. Pianist Jascha Nemtsov and soprano Alice Lackner will perform piano and vocal works by these composers. Nemtsov will also be in conversation about the historical context with the renowned Stalinism researcher and Professor of European Contemporary History at the Viadrina University Frankfurt (Oder) Claudia Weber.

In cooperation with musica reanimata – Förderverein zur Wiederentdeckung NS-verfolgter Komponisten und ihrer Werke e.V.