--View the video of Laura's performance of
Mannheim Remembered.
[28.8]
[ISDN]
Commissioned by The Holocaust Education Committee
of Sinclair Community College
L.A. Kessler
April 1997, Dayton, Ohio
Mannheim Remembered is inspired by my friendship with Robert Kahn and my experience assisting him with his
book Reflections of Jewish Survivors from Mannheim. Since I was a
teenager, Bob has impressed and motivated me with his positive attitude
toward life after the Holocaust. His tireless energy and commitment to
issues of the Jewish people helped inspire this composition, begun initially
in 1993. In the past four years I have recorded many variations, the most
recent of which was composed for the Holocaust Education Committee. I hope
others will be able to identify somehow with this piece and will join me in
honoring Bob Kahn and other survivors of Mannheim, Germany to thank them for
the legacy of strength and survival they have courageously shared with us
and future generations of the Jewish people.
There are several movements to this piece representing passages of time with
different emotions. These are some of the mental images that guided me in
my composition.
One day, about ten years ago in Dayton, Ohio, Robert Kahn sat down to have breakfast while CBS This Morning aired on TV. When he looked up and saw who they were interviewing, he couldn’t believe it. There on his TV screen was his closest childhood friend from Mannheim, Germany whom he hadn’t seen since the Holocaust 50 years earlier and had presumed dead. Overjoyed, he contacted the network. His best friend had also feared Bob had not survived and was likewise elated. CBS then arranged an all-expense paid reunion for the two friends and their wives in New York City and filmed the meeting for TV, which later aired on CBS This Morning. The two boyhood friends were united at last and shared many bittersweet memories about life before and after the Holocaust, their children, grandchildren and many other blessings.
This chance meeting inspired Bob to wonder if any other friends from Mannheim had survived the concentration camps during the war. He then took on the ambitious task of forming the Mannheim Holocaust Reunion Committee, a group dedicated to locating and reuniting former Jewish inhabitants of Mannheim, Germany. Letters were sent all over the world throughout the Jewish Diaspora and an astounding number of responses came back! Throughout North America, Israel, Europe, Australia, Brazil and many other places, former Mannheimers were alive and well and their voices could still be heard. A very poignant reunion was held in Dayton, Ohio with over 100 participants.
Bob has always been a shining star where Jewish affairs are concerned and
has dedicated much of his life to Holocaust Education. He is particularly
effective at explaining the Holocaust to diverse audiences including school
children and non-Jews alike. His kindness, gentle sense of humor, and
ability to stress the positive message of survival and tolerance, rather
than the misery of genocide and hate, make him one of the most inspiring
individuals I have ever known. Bob also took on another ambitious task
recently and was instrumental in the formation of a Holocaust Wing at the
National Air Force Museum located at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in
Dayton, Ohio.