richard mcbee

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Brundibar Will Be Back

Brundibar will be back. We must never forget. On May 4th, 2005 a concert version of the children's opera, Brundibar, by Maurice Sendak and Tony Kushner, was performed at the Jewish Museum to a packed house. All the singing parts and the entire chorus, with the exception of Cat, Sparrow and Dog, were children, echoing the original fifty-five performances of this musical at the concentration camp of Terezin. The original was presented between 1942 to 1944 with a constantly new cast as the children were routinely shipped their deaths at Auschwitz. The opera's original 1938 libretto was by Adolf Hoffmeister with music by the Czech-Jewish composer Hans Krasa who was also imprisoned at Terezin and murdered at Auschwitz.

Pepicek and Aninku
illustration by Maurice Sendak, text by Tony Kushner
from Brundibar, Hyperion Books for Children, (2003)

Sendak and Kushner adapted the original musical first in a children's book that tells the simple tale of a brother and sister on a quest for milk for their sick mother. “I am Pepicek, very small” “And I am Aninku, his sister, even smaller.” They run to the town square where they finally encounter the milkman who proclaims “No money? No milk!” They don't know just what to do as a mean-spirited organ grinder, Brundibar, enters the square, cranking out his awful tunes that all the adults seem to love. The grown-ups throw money and Brundibar chases the children away. He hates the children. Hiding in an alley they are befriended by a talking sparrow, cat and dog who suggest that if all the children get together and sing a song, perhaps the adults will throw them money too. Three hundred kids assemble and perform wonderfully and Brundibar is defeated as Pepicek and Aninku bring the milk home to Mommy. Good triumphs over bad as children are able to make the bad man go away in a wonderful fable that certainly gave hope and solace to the original doomed audience.

Brundibar
illustration by Maurice Sendak, text by Tony Kushner
Hyperion Books for Children, (2003)

But we of course know the real ending for those children and the adults imprisoned at Terezen. So what good is a fable when the stakes are so high and the reality so disastrous? This is not the only piece of Holocaust literature that utilizes a children's fable to address the Nazi genocide. “Der Kaiser fun Atlantis” or “The Emperor of Atlantis: Death Abdicates” by Viktor Ullman (1898-1944) was written in Terezen. The appropriation of Nazi racist ideology to mock the Germans is carried out by the plot that imagines a vain Emperor Overall who kills so many people that Death himself rebels and refuses to allow anyone to die, ever. An absurd mayhem of chronic over population ensues and the Emperor is forced to reform his evil ways as Death agrees to return the world to normalcy. The imprisoned composer cunningly utilized classical German musical themes to mock the Nazi rulers. This opera fable, never actually performed at Terezin, was a strategy for survival through the use of music as a weapon of rebellion, much like Brundibar did in its many performances. Ironic humor, written on a larger than life scale, becomes a medium to somehow get through the day and perhaps have the strength to live another one.

Bullies Must be Defied!
illustration by Maurice Sendak, text by Tony Kushner
from Brundibar, Hyperion Books for Children, (2003)

Unfortunately universalism seems an unsavory aesthetic choice when the crime was the murder of Jews specifically because they were Jews. Nonetheless, as Leon Wieseltier has argued, the presentation of the Holocaust as a uniquely Jewish tragedy can have deeply problematic repercussions. “The doctrine of ‘the uniqueness of the Holocaust' also has the consequence of ripping the disaster so far out of history that it becomes incommensurable...(almost) sacred.” And of course it “was the precise opposite of the sacred...[it was] profane...obscene.” Further he argues, “Before Jews are Jews, they are human beings; and so the meaning of their history is never so unique that it is not also universal.” Murderous tyranny against Jews is frequently but a prelude to the victimization of all.

This utilization of the fable to universalize has been used in more recent times in the Italian movie, Life is Beautiful (1997) by Roberto Benigni. He directed, co-wrote, and starred in the tale of a hapless Italian Jew, Guido, comically wooing the prettiest girl in town in pre-war Fascist Italy. This bittersweet comedy turns serious as five years latter the happy couple are arrested with their five year old son and sent to a concentration camp. Guido attempts to shield his son from the horrors of the camp by explaining everything he sees is part of an elaborate game. Every player gets ‘points' for what happens and the winner gets a real tank as the grand prize. He invents more and more absurd reasons for the terrifying events around them. In the final chaotic days before liberation he convinces his son that it is all simply a silly game of hide and seek. Guido is finally captured and killed as the Allied tanks rumble into the camp. The little boy is rescued by an American tank commander, convinced he has somehow won the game. The use of comedy and tragic fable wraps the persecution of the Italian Jews in a tale of a father's love and sacrifice for his son.

Each one of these fables rebels against the unfathomable reality that the Nazi genocide created. Each tries to ameliorate the incomprehensible and, in the case of the first two, comfort the victims. Unfortunately none of them provides us an insight into the future, except the adapted version of Brundibar.

Brundibar's Final Note
illustration by Maurice Sendak, text by Tony Kushner
from Brundibar, Hyperion Books for Children, (2003)

On the last page of the Sendak-Kushner children's book Brundibar there is a 1944 invitation to performances of this musical in Terezin. It is supposedly authentic and yet scrolled across it is a dreadful ‘final note' from Brundibar. Not found in the original and invented by Tony Kushner it states “...nothing ever works out neatly – bullies don't give up completely. One departs, the next appears...though I go, I won't go far...I'll be back. Love, Brundibar.”

The Haggadah we recently read relates Jewish history when it states that “in every generation they have risen up against us to annihilate us...” Now we know it is also a terrible prophecy... now we know never to forget that Brundibar will be back.

Richard McBee

May 17, 2005

Brundibar, retold by Tony Kushner, pictures by Maurice Sendak after the opera by Hans Krasa and Adolf Hoffmeister. Hyperion Books for Children (2003).

Leon Wieseltier; commentary on Yosl Rakover Talks to God by Zvi Kolitz, Vintage International, New York, 2000.