Customer Reviews

The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

National Public Radio listeners have known Martin Goldsmith for years as the friendly, reassuring voice of "Performance Today." Encyclopedically knowledgeable about classical (and rock) music, Goldsmith has a relaxed and comfortable on-air style that helps to make classical music more accessible to broad audiences. That same style is found in "The Inextinguishable Symphony," helping to make another complex subject - the Holocaust - more accessible to audiences both familiar and unfamiliar with it.

But this isn't just "another book about the Holocaust." Nor is it about tragically anonymous victims. It is instead about Goldsmith's parents - Gunther, a flutist, and Rosemarie, a violist - who meet and charmingly fall in love in Nazi Germany in the `30s, as well as about Grandfather Alex and Uncle Helmut and other family members and friends, each of whom Goldsmith makes real and sympathetic through his rich, exquisitely detailed, and heartbreakingly honest narrative. These are people that the reader comes to care about deeply, and we celebrate - and in some cases grieve - their fates. Goldsmith is a helluva storyteller.

But the book is also not just a love story (Gunther literally does risk his life for his young sweetheart) or merely an author's purely personal journey in search of his own roots. Through the vehicle of his remarkable parents' own individual stories, Goldsmith explores the only-dimly known, but fascinating, story of the Judische Kulturbund - the Jewish Culture Association - to which Jewish musicians, actors, and others were artistically exiled in Nazi Germany. Goldsmith reveals much about this controversial and complicated organization which, although the only source of culture for German Jews, knowingly served the Nazis' propaganda purposes. The reader marvels at how much the "Kubu" was able to accomplish under such hateful conditions, but is also forced to ask, "What would I have done in these circumstances? Would I have risked my life just to make music?"

This is a troubling, but ultimately triumphant, book about real people trying to live their lives, their love, and their music in unthinkable times. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in music, in the Holocaust, in cultural history, or simply in a good love story well told. Bravo, Gunther and Rosemarie and Martin Goldsmith!

This is a story of love, family and music told against the backdrop of the Nazi era. This is a moving story about the author's family and how they endured the hardships as Jews in Germany through their love of music.I have read many books on the holocaust and I find this book to be one of the most moving and touching. It's impossible to read this book without shedding a tear. It is a great story, and I truly recommend this book.

This was a wonderful experience of survival. I was propelled into the lives of my "relatives" at a time in our recent past ... all historically true!

The book was gripping, I could not put it down. Memories of Victor Frankle's quote of Fredrick Nitche "He who has a 'why' to live for, can conquer any 'how'", as he survived from within the concentration camp, are repeated as these lovers flourish from "outside" of the that horror.

A story of a son's relationship to his parents, and their passion and discovery of each other. Thank you to the Goldsmith family!!!

A place of honor in my library!

-Craig Levine lotusnotesclp@kfwbmail.com

Martin Goldsmith has done the world a favor. Not only is this book compelling reading, the story it tells is one that everyone on the planet needs to know so that such abominations never again occur. Goldsmith has brought to life a courage of spirit, not to mention the power of music and culture to endure, which should resonate throughout humanity. If he never does another thing but write this book, he will have done a great service. The story of his family's experiences in the Kulturbund as well as in the concentration camps is both uplifting and heart rending. Goldsmith reminds us that freedom is a precious commodity, and so are compassion and kindness, not to mention music, which enhances the soul.

I've read other accounts of the holocaust. This one moved me the most deeply, perhaps because the author displays the courage to depict everyone - both the Nazis and the suffering individuals - with frankness and candor. His grandfather was a "rat" and a philanderer who left his faithful wife behind to die when he fled Germany with another woman. The many complexities and flaws of the head of the Kulturbund are also explored. Mr. Goldsmith's depiction of Jews as complex humans with foibles and flaws - not perfect humans suffering at the hands of the evil Nazis - endows this book with an extra measure of honesty that makes its tale much more moving. I also find it a troubling book. Confronted with Nazism, Germany's Jews could fall back on a rich tradition of art and music to unite them and foster their spirits. In America today, if we faced such a threat, what would uplift any of us, both Jews and non-Jews like myself? Nintendo? The Gap? We have gained a lot in America, but what have we lost?

As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, I was completely captivated by this book. Up to now I found it extremely difficult to read materials related to the Holocaust. It just felt "too close to home." Now that I see my own children growing up filled with musical talent, I wonder about our deceased relatives and what talents were buried with them. Mr. Goldsmith writes so beautifully, and allows me to finally understand much of what had occurred in that terrible time. He gives my mother's inner silent pain a "voice." Thank you so much.

This Martin Goldsmith is a multitalented guy . I knew his voice as the host of NPR's Performance Today, and this memoir of his (Jewish) parents' struggles and love in Hitler's Germany shows where he got his classical music genes. It must have taken a lot of courage to write this book -- Goldsmith explains how the Nazi terror was a taboo subject growing up , so we readers are fortunate that he had the courage to tell this beautiful story, and to tell it in such a modest, uncluttered, and elegant way . The chapter about the abortive attempt at escape on the St. Louis is a real cliff-hanger, and his account of the forced march of the jews, including the authors father and uncle, is chilling. Don't miss this one.

If you are at all familiar with the NPR program "Performance Today" you will surely know who Martin Goldsmith is. For those who don't know of him he was, until recently, the host of this exceptional program that guides its listeners into a full appreciation of classical music. Because I loved listening and learning so much from Mr. Goldsmith I picked up this book and began reading. While I knew nothing about his accomplished, yet tragic family history beforehand, I found the synopsis of the book to be utterly appealing. Goldsmith's parents, Gunther and Rosemarie are described so well that I quickly felt I knew them and could feel the oppressive atmosphere they lived in. This is an outstanding book. It is so well written that I could almost hear the music that his gifted and fortunate parents made. I also learned so much more about the atrocities of Nazi Germany than I thought possible(i.e. the years of segregation, boycotting and public humiliation that preceded so many peoples eventual arrest and imprisonment that we know so much about). In the book Mr. Goldsmith's father, Gunther states he wasn't a survivor of the holocaust because he wasn't held captive in the prison camps, but I beg to differ. The life he and Rosemarie lived in the eight or nine years before they found freedom in America was very much like a prison without the walls. And the enduring survivor's guilt for being some of the lucky few to get out alive compounds the holocaust sentence. I wept at the end of this book and I recommend it to everyone as it is one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. Just keep the tissues close at hand---you'll need them!

"A true story of music and love in Nazi Germany" And what a story it is. The story is both beautiful and painful. The beauty lies in the love these Jewish people had for each other and their music; it also lies in their hope, optimism, and determination to survive. The painful, even horrible part of the story is in the suffering and humiliation inflicted on innocent people by their fellow humans and the indifference (or simply not wanting to know) of many of their fellow citizens. Although Gunther and Rosemarie escape to the U.S. and live happy, productive lives, the pain lives on in them and in other survivors due to the guilt caused by their inability to save their parents, siblings and grandparents from the death camps. Martin wrote a beautiful book. His use of words is lyrical and creates a portrait of Nazi Germany you can almost feel and smell. It is a book I would not want to miss reading. Martin did not emphasize the pain, but instead emphasized the beauty. At the end you were sad, but wiser and inspired with a love for your fellowman and a desire to prevent this type of tyranny from ever coming to power again.

Martin Goldsmith has skillfully woven together many threads - a tender love story, a personal search for the family he never knew, an eye-opening look at a previously little known aspect of the Holocaust, and, above all, a tribute to the power of music to exorcise -- if only for a brief time -- the demons that can afflict all humankind. This is a universal story that everyone should read.