Future Memories: Lotoro's journey in search of music written in concentration camps continues in the Czech Republic and Italy

Francesco Lotoro a Terezìn (Repubblica Ceca)

Francesco Lotoro 's journey in search of music composed in concentration camps and other places of civilian and military captivity around the world continues in the Czech Republic and Italy . The project "Future Memories. Lotoro's Journey to Save the Lost Music ," of which this journey is also part, is promoted by the Fondazione Istituto di Letteratura Musicale Concentrazionaria ETS and supported by the Claims Conference (New York), the Puglia Region, the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe (London), the Righteous Persons Foundation (Los Angeles), and the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah (Paris) . The journey was undertaken together with Grazia Tiritiello , vice president of the ILMC Foundation.

Despite extensive research conducted over 30 years in Terezín (Czech Republic) , a further trip was necessary to further investigate the logistics of the transfer of deportees by train from Prague to Terezín and from Terezín to Birkenau; as testified by numerous survivors, the train initially stopped at Bohušovice and the remaining stretch was covered on foot by the deportees. Later, the deportees themselves built the railway siding that ended in front of the Hamburger-Kaserne .

This element was very important not only because the road asphalt had almost entirely erased the last stretch of the track but also because a lost song by Ilse Weber and reconstructed from memory by the survivor Aviva Bar-On specifically cited the Hamburger-Kaserne as the place where the deportees disembarked and, in fact, upon careful inspection the information coincided.

As on other occasions, a meeting took place in Prague with our now centenarian friend Ivan Karel (son of the composer Rudolf Karel), and some rare antique books were finally examined, in which it was possible to recover songbooks in Czech and Polish written in the concentration camps.

In the photos: Francesco Lotoro in Terezín (Czech Republic); on his way to Prague; in Prague with Ivan Karel

By flight from Prague to Bergamo and by bus to Milan, Lotoro and Tiritiello finally reached Pesaro, where they met again with writer and art researcher Roberto Malini. Malini entrusted the ILMC Foundation with numerous works of art for safekeeping and cataloging, including 47 drawings and watercolors by Ukrainian-Jewish artist David Horovitz (a survivor of Stalin's persecution and the Third Reich's concentration camps) and eight pencil drawings by an anonymous Polish prisoner of war in Stalag VIIA.

In the photos: Francesco Lotoro in Pesaro with Roberto Malini