Jeden střípek rodové historie ke druhému a strom se nejen rozrůstá a košatí, ale přibývá poznání předků a dalších příbuzných z rozrodu.
Jedna ze zajímavých osob v mém rozrodu je hudebník, houslista a profesor na konzervatoři. Po II. Světové válce žil ve Spojených státech kam se dostal z Janova přes Kolumbii a Kanadu.
- Narozen 3. května 1926 Warsaw, Warszawa, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland
- Zesnul 28. lis, 2008 Bloomfield, Hartford County, Connecticut, United States
- Pohřben byl na hřbitově Mountain View Cemetery, Bloomfield, Hartford County, Connecticut, United States
Josef Marie Karas se snažil vzkřísit nalezenou Židovskou hudbu, která vznikla v Terezínském ghettu během II. světové války. O této hudbě se velmi mluví v jeho nekrolozích. Jeden z jeho nekrologů byl nasán i v The New York Times ze dne 3. prosince 2008.
Narozen v Polsku - umírá v USA, ale je to stále Moravák.
Jeho fotografie
Tady jsou jeho rodiče a prarodiče:
Nekrolog v novinách:
Joza Karas, Who Recovered Music From Concentration Camp, Dies at 82
By Douglas
Martin
• Dec. 3, 2008
Joza Karas,
a musician and teacher who became a sleuth in his quarter-century-long search
for the music and stories of composers who managed to do masterly work in a
Nazi concentration camp, died on Friday in Bloomfield, Conn. He was 82.
His family
announced the death.
In 1985,
Mr. Karas (whose first name is pronounced YO-zha), published “Music in Terezin,
1941-1945.” The book chronicled the thriving musical life in the disease-ridden
and notoriously lethal concentration camp at Terezin, in what is now the Czech
Republic. The camp was also known by its German name, Theresienstadt.
Mr. Karas
collected more than 50 pieces of the music written there and produced editions
that have been widely performed.
In films
and by other means, the Nazis made propaganda use of the four concert
orchestras and as many chamber groups that flourished at Terezin. An opera
company mounted several full-scale productions. A jazz band was called the
Ghetto Swingers.
Flower pots
obscured the feet of musicians who had no shoes.
In truth,
Terezin was a place where 140,000 people, mainly Jews, were held in a labor
camp or transferred to death camps like Auschwitz. Many died at Terezin through
execution, disease and starvation. About 60,000 people were crammed into an
area meant for 7,000.
But the
music was real, developing spontaneously after a pianist found and repaired a
piano abandoned in the town. Soon there were several choruses. Inmates smuggled
in instruments in pieces.
Eventually,
more than 10 composer-inmates created original works, many of which were
performed in the camp. One such composer was Viktor Ullmann, who had studied
with Arnold Schoenberg. He formed the Studio for New Music at Terezin. Others
were Hans Krasa, Gideon Klein and Pavel Haas.
Despite
propagandizing the music, the Nazis had no interest in preserving it, and the
composers and musicians could not: many of them were killed. Tracking it down
became Mr. Karas’s obsession.
“Why should
I, a Christian, get involved in a research project virtually untouched for 25
years, since the last puff of smoke had darkened the skies of Auschwitz?” he
wrote in his book. “Putting aside these questions, I felt attracted to the
project because I am a Czech musician, and this was a subject dealing with the
music of Czechoslovak Jews.”
Josef M.
Karas was born in Warsaw on May 3, 1926 and learned to play the violin when he
was very young. His father, Frantisek, was a government official, a professor
of Polish and an author who wrote about Czech customs; he also helped Jews as
part of the World War II underground.
As a boy,
Joza noticed that his Jewish classmates had stopped coming to school with no
explanation. He saw signs warning people away from Jewish-owned stores. Jews
began to wear the yellow Star of David.
In 1948 Mr.
Karas escaped the country, which by then was under Communist rule, and made his
way to the United States by way of Colombia and Canada. In 1955 he began more
than a half-century of teaching the violin at the Hartt School of Music at the
University of Hartford and of playing the instrument in the Hartford Symphony.
In 1970 Mr.
Karas read three small articles in a Czech music magazine reporting that eight
short compositions and fragments of music from Terezin had been deposited in
the Jewish State Museum in Prague. Investigating this seemed a perfect project
for summer break.
On his
first trip to Prague, he made several major finds. One was the piano reduction
and orchestral version (for 13 instruments) of Hans Krasa’s children’s opera
“Brundibar.” It had been the most popular musical production in the camp,
presented 55 times from September 1943 to October 1944.
Mr. Karas
made a performing edition of the opera, which is about a brother and sister
whose efforts to buy milk for their sick mother are thwarted by an evil organ
grinder. (The Nazi guards apparently never grasped the metaphor.)
He
conducted the North American premiere of the opera in Czech in 1975 and the
English language premiere in 1977, using a translation by him and his wife, the
former Milada Javora, who had died in 1974.
In 1993
Channel Classics recorded his version as part of its “Composers From
Theresienstadt” series. Mr. Karas conducted.
Mr. Karas
is survived by his second wife, the former Anne Killackey; his sons, Francis,
Henry, Michael, Joseph and Alexander; his daughter, Joan K. Carrasquillo; his
brothers, Zdenek and Frantisek; his sister, Jana Spacek; and seven
grandchildren.
“When I
started my research, I used to have nightmares,” Mr. Karas told The Hartford
Courant. “And guilt. I’d pick up a piece of chocolate and I couldn’t eat it.”
He
recovered. “They say Czechs get used to anything,” he said. “Even the gallows.”
Náhrobek Josefa Karase a jeho Manželek:
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