Francesco Lotoro remembers Hanus Weber, son of the musician Ilse Weber

In memory of 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐔𝐒 𝐖𝐄𝐁𝐄𝐑, who left on a train

The eldest son of Jewish writer and musician Ilse Weber passed away in September 2021, but no newspaper reported the news.

by 𝐅𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐎 𝐋𝐎𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐎

He died at the age of 90 in a Stockholm nursing home during the final, severe blows of Covid-19. Not a single obituary appeared in a magazine or online, nor did a single journalist write about him. Nothing is known of his solitary passing, while the internet, in its stupid algorithm, writes of him as if he were alive, so much so that he is considered 93 years old, his current age.

I am talking about my dear friend Hanuš, born in Prague on January 1, 1931 and died on September 14, 2021 in the Swedish capital, the surviving son of the Moravian Jewish writer and musician Ilse Weber née Herlinger; the remains of poor Hanuš rest next to those of his father Vilém in the Jewish cemetery in Solna (Stockholm) at the Sodra Begravningkyrkogård.

It took days of searching with Swedish friends Anders and Sonia Bovin to find his grave.

The story of Hanuš and his mother Ilse is among the most moving and compelling in the biographical legacy of men and women of the Second World War. Born on January 11, 1903, in Witkowitz (now Vítkovice v Krkonoších, Czech Republic), Ilse married Vilém Weber in 1930 and moved with him to Prague. However, following the German occupation in 1939, they entrusted their eldest son Hanuš to a Kindertransport to safety in Great Britain.

On the platform of Prague's main train station, Ilse wrote the song Abschiedslied on a piece of paper for her son Hanuš as the train pulled away; the melody touched her heart deeply.

In February 1942, Ilse, her husband, and their youngest son Tomáš (called Tommy) were deported to Theresienstadt. Ilse worked in the camp as a child care nurse and wrote around 60 poems and songs. In October 1944, Ilse followed her husband and Tommy to Birkenau. On October 6, she and Tommy were sent to the gas chambers with other children from Theresienstadt.

Having survived and returned to Prague, Vilém recovered Ilse's songs and poems, but in 1968, during the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops, a Soviet soldier confiscated much of the material. In 1974, Vilém left Prague to finally reunite with Hanuš in Stockholm, but died of a heart attack during a stopover at Copenhagen Airport.

A well-known journalist for Swedish national radio, a profound expert on Swedish football, and a man of great culture, Hanuš recently wasn't particularly fond of talking about his mother; he had his own profound, inscrutable reasons, and this too is filial love.

The last time I met him at his house in Solna, Hanuš and I were alone after lunch, and once again Hanuš deflected the subject. At that point, I broke the ice with a joke that was popular during the days of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic: “Hanuš, do you know what the Czechoslovaks used to say about their national anthem? The beginning is the anthem of the Bohemians, the end is the anthem of the Slovaks, and the pause between the two anthems is the Moravian anthem.”

Finally, Hanuš loosened up and laughed heartily. He told me about his mother and father, how he was taken from Great Britain with 150 other children to Sweden (a neutral country during the war), and how his parents had made no less than five attempts to reach him in Stockholm, requesting family reunification; the Swedish authorities, in keeping with their declared neutrality, rejected each request.

I said to him: “Hanuš, did you know that in Theresienstadt your mother wrote another song in addition to the eight already published? Some people in Israel still remember it.”

“I've heard about it,” Hanuš replied. “I'd like to go to Israel, but I can't make long trips.”

“I’ll do it,” I replied. “I’ll go to Israel, I’ll look for this person, I’ll bring you back your mother’s song.”

A few months later, in Kyriat Ono, I met Aviva Bar-On, a sweet lady who had been deported to Theresienstadt at the age of 10 and who remembered Ilse's song very well; we performed the song in Jerusalem in 2018 for the 70th anniversary of the Jewish state's independence, and it was Aviva Bar-On who sang it again.

My dear friend Hanuš deserved much, much more; throughout his life, he lived with a pain greater than himself, but he knew how to handle it like a man of another time, and learning of his passing so late today makes us all a little guilty.

And yet, once the trail of a song has faded, what remains are torn and finally mended soul tissues, hearts reconciled with our most painful history, an inexplicable sense of peace.

I like to think that Hanuš, who left his mother in 1939 on a train from Prague, returned to her on a train from the railways of the Upper Worlds – they say that wonderful trains travel in those Worlds – and that Ilse, Vilém and his brother Tommy were waiting for him on the platform.

In the following photos: Hanus Weber with his parents Ilse and Vilém and his little brother Tommy, in the foreground in a recent photo and with Francesco Lotoro