VOICES OF DEFIANCE

THE PRISON CHORUS OF TEREZÍN

"We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them."

— Edgar Krasa
singer and survivor of Terezín

June 1944 The Red Cross, with SS Colonel Adolph Eichmann as their guide, tour
Terezín, the Nazi's “showcase” city for Jews in occupied Czechoslovakia. The
climax of the visit is a performance of Verdi's fiery Requiem mass by the town
chorus.

In truth, Terezín is no haven, but a waystation on the road to Auschwitz and death.
The singers are concentration camp inmates, slated for the gas chambers. The visit
by the Red Cross is nothing less than Nazi propaganda; and the Requiem, a heroic
act of defiance by an indomitable musician in the face of oppression and genocide.

Libera me, Domine!

"Deliver me, O Lord!"
— the Requiem

May 2006 The Verdi Requiem and the words of the Latin mass for the dead echo
within the prison walls of Terezín again, in a haunting performance that honors the
courage and sacrifice of those doomed singers and the determined man who led
them: prisoner, conductor, Jew — Rafael Schächter.

VOICES OF DEFIANCE weaves past and present to tell the remarkable story of
Rafael Schächter and how he transformed the Verdi Requiem, one of the most
hallowed compositions in the Roman Catholic faith, into a spiritual battle cry that
sustained the doomed Jews of the Terezín prison camp. The film also traces how,
60 years later, another Jewish maestro would revive the spirit, the meaning and the
music of Schächter's defiance. One part historical exposé, one part survivor’s
testament, and one part personal journey into the invincible power of music, the
film braids together multiple storylines to deliver an emotional picture of how
music and faith fed hope and survival in the face of unspeakable horror.

VOICES OF DEFIANCE © 2008 MURRY SIDLIN / PARTISAN PICTURES P. 1

 VOICES OF DEFIANCE

THE FILM

The tale of Rafael Schächter forms the heart of the film. How in the face of death
he directed one of the most demanding of all choral compositions — not once, but
16 times — with just one smuggled copy of the score, a legless piano and a chorus
racked by disease and starvation. And how, not long after the concert for the Red
Cross, Schächter was shipped off to Auschwitz to die — along with many of the
camp's finest surviving musicians and artists.

A second dedicated conductor opens a contemporary window on the story —

Murry Sidlin, a child of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Schäcter’s story
became his passion and his purpose. For years Sidlin tracked down the few
surviving members of the chorus and every last scrap of documentary evidence
about the camp and the Verdi performances. From these vestiges he created a
powerful new performance piece, "Defiant Requiem" mixing Verdi’s score with
testimony by those who lived and died in Terezín.

“Cultural life in Terezín was the only phenomenon that

transformed us back to human beings.”
— Rabbi Leo Baeck
Terezín survivor

VOICES OF DEFIANCE is the story of those who raised their voices in defiance,
and one man, Rafael Schächter, who stood up and sang in the face of his
executioner — Adolph Eichmann. It is the story of the chorus members, who
labored by day, 12 hours or more with little food, who waded through filth and
sidestepped dead bodies, and the life-saving anticipation of evening rehearsals that
gave them strength to carry on. And it is the story of Murry Sidlin, another man
driven by the passion for music, who took on a quest to be Schächter's biographer
and became, instead, his surrogate and champion.

Together, the interconnected stories of Schächter and Sidlin reveal the staggering
paradox of Terezín: a Nazi prison, ruled by deception, depravity and death, and yet
a place where Jews were allowed and even encouraged by their captors to write, to
teach, to create art and to perform. The Nazis used Terezín as a fig leaf to
camouflage the inhuman obscenity of the Holocaust. In truth, for 160,000
innocent men, women and children, Hitler's "model" city for the Jews was a
crowded outpost on the road to the death camps.

Against this backdrop, the film will explore how Verdi’s magnificent score became
a lifeline, a refuge from barbaric behavior and inhuman conditions. How the music
of a Catholic requiem became the food that sustained a Jewish chorus against the
mind-numbing miseries of hunger, disease and fear.

VOICES OF DEFIANCE © 2008 MURRY SIDLIN / PARTISAN PICTURES P. 2

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FILM ELEMENTS

The film's core traces the story of Rafael Schächter's final year of life. The film's
contemporary framework is defined by a performance of Murry Sidlin's "Defiant
Requiem” filmed live in a 5-camera HD shoot within the ghosted walls of Terezín
— six decades after Verdi was last performed there by starving men and women.

Evocative, stylized re-enactments of Schächter's life and of daily existence in

Terezín will weave throughout the film — the despair of new arrivals and the soul-
crushing routine of the camp, passionate late-night rehearsals, the Red Cross
propaganda tour, the chorus's desperate last performance, and final departure of
the doomed transports; all filmed on location within the walls of the 18th Century
fortress of Terezín and in the Czech Republic capital of Prague.

The testimony of the survivors — those who sang for Schächter and those who
watched and listened — will bring to life the personal side of this historic drama.
Through their eyes we will witness the horror and the struggle to survive. Through
their words we will meet Rafael Schächter and feel how the music kept them alive.

Commentary by musicians, artists, historians and psychologists will lay bare the
story’s rich and painful truths, and explore how music and art can nourish the soul
and spark hope even in the most desperate circumstances.

The 90-minute film will open with Verdi’s first notes and end with the last. At times
the Requiem will fade to a whisper behind interviews, reenactments and historical
footage; at times it will surge to the foreground in all its bittersweet glory, with full
orchestra and chorus conducted by Murry Sidlin. Verdi's powerful, evocative
music will be accompanied by paintings, drawings and posters from the artistic
trove created by Terezín inmates, by the indelible documentary record left by Nazi
propaganda films, and by other original imagery contrasting beauty and self-
expression with barbarity, prejudice and abuse.

VOICES OF DEFIANCE is the story of those who sang in Terezín, those who were
murdered and those who survived, of voices that will not be silenced…

It is the story of a man whose passion is to honor their legacy by spreading the
word, and the story of the Verdi Requiem's return to Terezín...

It is the story of music’s power to nurture and to transform human reality; and how,
by listening and singing desperately to their fellow prisoners, the Jews of Terezín
were able to reassure themselves that their fate was a failure of man, not of God.

VOICES OF DEFIANCE © 2008 MURRY SIDLIN / PARTISAN PICTURES P. 3