arts & culture
‘We Are Here’: Concert Featuring
Holocaust Songs to Debut at Carnegie Hall
Mike Wagenheim | JNS.org
T 22
JANUARY 12, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
“We Are Here”: Songs from the Holocaust banner
the music of the Holocaust, but when
Ira started telling me what his mission
was and about the music, it completely
aligned with something that I was
passionate about, interested in and
already been researching,” explained
Savenor, who had recently taught a
course on Holocaust memoirs. “This
form of resistance is something that
really spoke to me. And it felt like
something really sacred that we needed
to commemorate.”
That meant, for Antelis, that the
concert was not to be held at Savenor’s
synagogue — one of the largest in the
United States — or at the Museum of
Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to
the Holocaust in Lower Manhattan. He
was insistent that the event takes place
at the famed Carnegie Hall in Midtown
Manhattan, even if it meant a signifi cant
amount of money came out of his own
pocket. The 7:30 p.m. concert at be held in
Carnegie’s Stern Auditorium on Jan. 26
will feature music and readings by more
than 30 stars and cantors, including
Tony and Grammy Award winners
and nominees Harvey Fierstein, Chita
Rivera, Shoshana Bean, Andrew Lippa
and Brenda Russell; pop stars Wendy
Moten and Justin Jesso; renowned
Cantors Daniel Mutlu, Danny Mendelson,
Rachel Brook and Yanky Lemmer; and
His Eminence Timothy Michael Cardinal
Dolan, Archbishop of New York.

‘A life of its own’
Antelis and Savenor say they have
been blown away by the immense
response, both in and outside the
Jewish community.

“The concert has really taken on a life
of its own,” said Savenor, who will host
what he termed as more of a communal
event. “It’s no longer a commemoration
of the past. The diversity, and the
music and the messaging, is really
being elevated and transformed
into a statement about confronting
discrimination today.”
Maddie Burton, a co-producer for the
concert, said that Dolan’s appearance,
in particular, is “refl ective of the fact
that it’s not just Jewish people who
are looking to take a stand against
antisemitism, that it really is this larger
cultural reaction to wanting to declare
loud and proud but that the Jews are
still here.”
With weeks left until the concert,
Burton said, “We are putting fi nishing
touches on the melodic and harmonic
choices that we’re making, and then we’ll
really ramp up rehearsals, working with
our full orchestra and getting all of our
performers together in the room.”
There is also outreach to be done with
the Jewish community and promotion to
fi ll the 2,800-seat auditorium. But Burton
said that the response so far from those
agreeing to take part in the event is
promising for its overall success.

“It wasn’t easy, per se,” he
acknowledged. But every single person
who signed on pretty emphatically said
this is something that they not only
want to, but need to, be part of.” 1
Courtesy he day Holocaust survivor and
Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel
died, composer and music
producer Ira Antelis said something
came over him. “I thought, who carries
on the message of the Holocaust?
Because in my life, he was the fi gure for
me. And I started just researching some
things about him,” Antelis said.

That endeavor led Antelis to a book
Wiesel wrote the forward to called “We
Are Here: Songs of the Holocaust,”
a collection of songs written in the
ghettos and concentration camps of
Nazi-occupied Europe. After locating
the songbook, Antelis decided to
organize a concert in his hometown of
Chicago, based on the music. It never
came to fruition due to the COVID-19
pandemic. But following the lifting of restrictions
and a decision by Antelis to relaunch
his eff orts, he searched online and
stumbled upon an article by Bret Werb,
staff musicologist at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, called
“Fourteen Shoah Songbooks.”
“I said to myself: There’s a concert.

We’re going to do a concert on these
14 songbooks — one song from every
book, and honor the writers and people
who put the songbooks together,” said
Antelis, who produced the concert at
Temple Sholom Chicago in April in
conjunction with Yom Hashoah, the
annual Holocaust day of remembrance.

Determined to bring the concert to
New York, Antelis revived the pandemic-
era idea with an old Chicago friend,
Rabbi Charles Savenor, who serves as
director of congregational education at
Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue. The
two had a chance encounter in New
York 15 years after their last meeting
when Antelis presented Savenor with
his vision.

“I’m not musical at all. I can’t carry a
tune. I have no rhythm. I knew about