納粹大屠殺倖存者和馬友友演奏昔日獄友歌曲

A 90-year-old Holocaust survivor will make his orchestral debut with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma on Tuesday to benefit a foundation dedicated to preserving the work of artists and musicians killed by the Nazis.

Ma and George Horner, a retired doctor who lives near Philadelphia, embraced warmly in a small room at Boston's Symphony Hall on Tuesday afternoon before a brief rehearsal.

Ma thanked Horner for helping the Terezin Music Foundation, named for the town of Terezin, site of an unusual Jewish ghetto in what was then German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Even amid death and hard labor, Nazi soldiers there allowed prisoners to stage performances.

On Tuesday night, they will play music composed 70 years ago when Horner was incarcerated.

"It's an extraordinary link to the past," said concert organizer Mark Ludwig, who leads the foundation.

Horner played piano and accordion in the Terezin cabarets, including tunes written by fellow inmate Karel Svenk. On Tuesday, Horner will play two of Svenk's works solo - a march and a lullaby - and then team up with Ma for a third piece called "How Come the Black Man Sits in the Back of the Bus?"

Svenk did not survive the genocide. But his musical legacy has, due in part to a chance meeting of Ludwig, a scholar of Terezin composers, and Horner, who never forgot the songs that were written and played in captivity.

Still, Ludwig found it hard to ask Horner to perform pieces laden with such difficult memories.

"To ask somebody who ... played this in the camps, that's asking a lot," said Ludwig.

Yet Horner readily agreed to what he described as a "noble" mission. It didn't hurt that he would be sharing the stage with Ma - even if he thought Ludwig was joking at first.

"I told him, 'Do you want me to swallow that one?'" Horner recalled with a laugh. "I couldn't believe it because it's a fantastic thing for me."

Ma said before the performance that he hoped it will inspire people to a better future.

"I grew up with the words, 'never again,'" said Ma, who was born 10 years after the end of World War II revealed the scope of the Holocaust. "It is kind of inconceivable that there are people who say the Holocaust didn't exist. George Horner is a living contradiction of what those people are saying."

He said Horner was able to survive "because he had music, because he had friends, because the power of music could fill in the empty spaces."

"To me George Horner is a huge hero, and is a huge inspiration," Ma said. "He is a witness to a window, and to a slice of history, that we never want to see again, and yet we keep seeing versions of that all over the world. I hope we are inspired by that and we keep that memory forever."

The program features additional performances by Ma and the Hawthorne String Quartet. In a statement, Ma said he's glad the foundation is "giving voice through music to those whose voices have been tragically silenced."

Horner was 21 when he was freed by Allied soldiers in 1945 after serving time at Terezin, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. His parents and sister perished in the camps.

And though his back still bears the scars of a Nazi beating, he remains spry and seems much younger than his 90 years.

When Horner found out about the duet with Ma, Ludwig said, "He was so excited, to me he sounded like a teenager."據美國媒體10月22日報道，一名90歲的納粹大屠殺倖存者當天在波士頓交響樂大廳和華裔大提琴家馬友友同臺演出，給特雷津音樂基金會（Terezin Music Foundation）籌集資金，該音樂會一直致力於保護在大屠殺中遇難的藝術家和音樂家的作品。

喬治•赫納在第二次世界大戰期間被納粹囚禁，他的父母和姐妹都不幸在集中營裏去世。他曾被囚於特雷津集中營、奧斯維辛集中營和布痕瓦爾德集中營，飽受凌虐，當年納粹毆打所致的背部傷痛時至今日仍然折磨着他。1945年，21歲的他被盟軍救出，後來他成了一名醫生，現居費城。

赫納在22日晚單獨演奏了70年前的獄友卡雷爾•什文克所譜的兩首曲子，並和馬友友合作演奏了一曲《爲什麼黑人要坐在公交車後面？》（How Come the Black Man Sits in the Back of the Bus?）。遺憾的是，才華橫溢的什文克沒有逃脫被納粹屠殺的厄運。

演奏會組織者、特雷津基金會負責人馬克•路德維希說：“這場音樂會跟過去有着非同尋常的聯繫……邀請一個在集中營裏演奏過這些曲目的老人重拾昔日回憶，確實是強人所難。”

然而，赫納欣然同意了，他稱之爲“高貴”的使命。對於和馬友友同臺演出，赫納開始以爲是個玩笑。“我不敢相信，那對我來說簡直是異想天開。”路德維希回憶赫納當時的反應，“他特別興奮，就像一個十幾歲的孩子。”

二戰結束十年後出生的馬友友說：“我是聽着‘（大屠殺）再也不會發生’這樣的話長大的，不可思議的是，有人竟然說大屠殺沒有發生過，喬治•赫納的存在足以戳穿這些謊言。赫納能活下來，是因爲他有音樂、有朋友……赫納是一個大英雄、大靈感，他見證了這段歷史。”馬友友希望這場演出可以激勵人們去開創一個更好的未來。