We walk through the streets of Pszczyna, a small town in Poland in which is located the cemetery where several of my ancestors dating back to the 18th century are buried.   Our guide points to a house.  ‘This is where the Silbersteins once lived.’   He points to the next house and mentions another name, and then another house and another name.  He lists the occupation of the head of each household and mentions something about each of their families.   And yet all the people he refers to died over 70 years ago – driven from their homes, many murdered in the Holocaust.    The guide is doing more than simply retelling the past.  His talk is a religious incantation, summoning up ghosts from the past.  It is an act of remembrance which delivers to the former Jewish community of Pszczyna a form of immortality.  Our guide understands that as long as their unexceptional stories are continually being retold, then their existence both in the past and present is assured.  This piece is a reflection on that extraordinary, guided tour, a remembrance of ordinary lives obliterated from history, and supports the guide’s aim of immortalisation.

Ghosts Of The Jewish Community Pszczyna

My second cousin, Peter Hahn, was born in 1935. He and his mother, Ella,  were living in Warsaw and in 1942 they were murdered by the Nazis.   I do not know whether Peter and Ella died in the Warsaw ghetto,  an area of 1.3 square miles, where 460,000 Jews were imprisoned; or whether they were two of the 265,000 people from the ghetto, who were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp.  In the piece I have avoided reference to their tragic lives. Instead, I imagine Peter and Ella as heroic characters in some fictionalised parallel existence.

Peter Hahn And His Mother

Following his divorce of Emma, Carl marries Bertha Strufe in 1922.  Three years later Bertha sits by Carl’s bedside in hospital, knowing that he has not long to live.   She thinks about their three years of marriage and of the stories that Carl has told her of his life before they met.

Carl Schutz Part 6 Death

Carl employs Emma Muskalla as housekeeper and carer for his nine children. They become lovers, Emma becomes pregnant, and they marry in April 1903. The piece evokes conversations between Emma, Carl and the children, as new family relationships are established.   The piece ends recalling Clara questioning whether Emma will ever replace Carl's first wife in the hearts of Carl and his children.

Carl Schutz Part 5 Emma Muskalla

Carl's eldest daughter, Marie, is living a carefree life. Then her mother dies, and she realises that she must now take responsibility for the care of her eight brothers and sisters, aged one to eleven. She resolves to transform herself from a child to an adult.

Carl Schutz Part 4 Marie Aged 13

Clara, Carl Schutz's wife of twelve years, and mother to nine children, dies aged 37.

Carl Schutz Part 3 The Death Of Clara

Carl and Clara Bartus are in love.   They hide this from his Jewish and her Catholic families,  but when she becomes pregnant, they realise that the families will make their lives intolerable, and they resolve to travel the 850km  to Hamburg to start a new life.

Carl Schutz Part 2 Clara Bartus

Using birth, death and marriage documents relating to my great grand uncle Carl Schutz, I built up a largely fictitious life story which I used to inspire six musical pieces.

Part 1 The Teenage years  Carl was born in 1866, the youngest of eleven children.  In his teenage years he becomes rebellious and vows that someday he will run away from the village where his family and ancestors had lived for over 100 years.

Carl Schutz Part 1 The Teenage Years

This piece was inspired by a photograph of a dozen people, including my relative, Georg Schutz, standing by the grave of Erich Nothmann.  Along with Georg, Erich was a First World War Prisoner in Siberia.  Georg was released in 1918, but Erich died in captivity.

Memories Of Erich Nothmann

The tomb was intended for the family of my great uncle, Julius Frank. His son was buried there when he died in 1929 aged 22. Julius  died in 1936 aged 62 and is also buried there.  Julius's wife, Johanna, however, is not.  She was deported to Auschwitz in 1942.

peter shotts

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