Marysia Ajzensztat
Marysia Ajzensztat (in chronicles also as Maria o. Miriam Ajzensztat) (* 1923 ; † July 1942 in Warsaw ) was one of the most popular Jewish singers in the Warsaw ghetto .
Life
Ajzensztat was the daughter of Dawid Ajzensztat, director of a Warsaw synagogue and director of the Warsaw Synagogue Choirs. She played the piano at a young age before she appeared as a singer in the ghetto and was revered there as the “nightingale of the ghetto”. In the secret cultural events, she sang Jewish and Hebrew folk songs as well as classical music, including works by Gluck , Brahms and Schumann .
Ajzensztat was established in July 1942 by the SS shot as they did not want to separate from her father, who by the German occupiers to the Warsaw trading center was brought to the Treblinka extermination camp deported to be.
Eyewitness accounts
Last Sunday we went to Miriam Eisensztadt's morning concert in the "Femina". Marysia is nineteen, has brown hair, is of medium height and not particularly pretty, but has an extraordinary voice; they call her "the nightingale of the ghetto". She is the daughter of the former director of the synagogue choir at Tlomackiem - now her father conducts the ghetto orchestra. Marysia, although she only started performing a few weeks ago, is already very popular. At their first concert, at which we were present with Romek, the huge hall of the "Femina" was full. She sang a few French songs by Béranger and the "Hallelujah" by Mozart. We watched with pleasure as she stood in the middle of the stage, next to her father, who conducted the twenty-strong orchestra. The hall trembled with enthusiastic "bravos" and Marysia had to give some encores. After the concert, she got three or four bouquets of flowers. Probably they were smuggled over from the "Aryan" side, because there are neither roses nor lilies in the flower shop on Leszno. (Janine Bauman: Winter in the morning)
In his autobiography "Mein Leben", Marcel Reich-Ranicki repeats a criticism of Ajzensztat he wrote under the pseudonym Wiktor Hart during his imprisonment in the ghetto : Her singing testifies to the highest art, of measure and simplicity, she has it to be true in a very short time Mastery brought .
Reich-Ranicki described Marysia Ajzensztat as follows: The most successful and popular figure in musical life in the ghetto was a very young, black-haired woman with girlish grace, a soprano ... The beautiful and charming singer made her debut with arias by Gluck and Mozart, with songs by Schumann and Brahms ... The audience in the café, which was overcrowded every day, was delighted.
Her death, which he described in his biography immediately before the description of the death of his parents, he presented as follows: She ended up on the "Umschlagplatz", a Jew ... wanted and was able to save her. But her parents were already in the car - and she didn't want to part with them. She tried to tear herself away from the (Jewish) militiaman who was holding her. An SS man observed the scene and shot her. ... Others reported that she was pushed into the carriage to Treblinka and gassed there. (Marcel Reich-Ranicki: My Life)
literature
- Marcel Reich-Ranicki: My life. DVA 1999, ISBN 3-423-13056-3 .
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ajzensztat, Marysia |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ajzensztat, Maria; Ajzensztat, Miriam |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish-Jewish singer in the Warsaw Ghetto |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1923 |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 1942 |
| Place of death | Warsaw |