Martin Roman

Martin Roman (born April 23, 1910 in Berlin ; † May 12, 1996 in Emerson (New Jersey) , United States ) was a German musician and pianist .

Life

After his training in the last years of the Weimar Republic, Roman worked as a pianist for the Weintraubs Syncopators and was a member of Marek Weber's combo until 1933 . After the seizure of power , the Jew Roman began touring Europe with his own band , but he also played with Adi Rosner . In the Netherlands he was arrested by the German occupation forces during the war (1943) and interned in Vught , then transferred to the Westerbork transit camp.

Roman wrote the compositions for the camp cabaret there, Kasernenlied, I must sit, The song of two oxen, We ride on wooden horses and We women in the barracks . On January 20, 1944, he was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto , where he was musical director of Kurt Gerron's Cabaret Karussell and, for a time, also led the band Ghetto Swingers . On September 28, 1944, he was transferred to the Auschwitz extermination camp . In view of the advancing Red Army soldiers , Roman and other prisoners who were not yet completely exhausted were evacuated to the west and temporarily housed in the Sachsenhausen and Kaufering camps. In spring 1945 Roman had to take part in a death march ordered by the SS towards Wolfratshausen until he was finally liberated.

After the end of the war, Martin Roman moved to the United States, took on American citizenship and continued his musical career there. As a composer he occasionally worked there both for the stage ( 41 in a Sack . 1960 in New York ) and for film ( 50,000 BC [Before Clothing] 1963).

literature

• Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists from 1933 to 1945 . With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 292.

Web links

• Martin Roman in the Internet Movie Database (English)