Defiant Requiem

In 1941, Czech choral conductor Rafael Schächter was sent to the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt (aka Terezín), where as part of the genocidal "Final Solution" arranged by Adolf Eichmann, Jewish families were herded together in crowded, unsanitary conditions, plagued by disease. Here, Schächter used music, particularly a performance of a mass based on a smuggled copy of Verdi's Requiem, to not only bring hope and humanity to the camp inmates, but also to accuse and confront their Nazi captors. Written and directed by Doug Shultz, the PBS-aired documentary Defiant Requiem—narrated by Bebe Neuwirth—contrasts Schächter's nearly impossible original task with a contemporary return to once again perform the mass in the same location, witnessed by a dwindling number of survivors. At the time of the Holocaust, the chorus members rehearsed at night (although many were unfamiliar with the original Latin), following long and strenuous days of slave labor. The music performance was part of a cultural flowering of art, lectures, and plays—staged by the Nazis in an attempt to fool the international community about the treatment of Jews—all punctuated by mass deportations to the death camps. The documentary combines generous excerpts from the mass with survivor testimony and archival footage made for propaganda purposes. In 1944, the Nazi-sanctioned mass was staged for the International Red Cross, offering supposed proof of the first-class living conditions of the Jews—thousands of whom were shipped to Auschwitz immediately following this charade. Eventually, Schächter himself was transported and perished a few weeks before the war's end. A magnificent film that serves as witness to humankind at its worst and best, this is highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: C, P. (S. Rees)