Violinist Henry Meyer, a survivor of the Holocaust, identifies with the stories of wartime journalist Moshe Prager. The Polish-Israeli journalist wrote about the European Jewish community in Sparks of Glory, a set of stories set to music by Paul Schoenfield in 1995.

IF YOU GO

What: Chamber Music with James Tocco. Paul Schoenfield, Sparks of Glory. Jeffrey Moulter, violin; Larry Lieberson, clarinet; Steve Honigber, cello; Henry Meyer, narrator.     When: 8 p.m. Wednesday     Where: Recital Hall, CCM     Admission: Free. 556-4183

        “The second one is the story of a little boy who has been saved when his parents were killed, by playing dead,” says Mr. Meyer, who will narrate the text in a performance of Sparks of Glory Wednesday at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. “He says, "My name is Chaim,' which means life. The boy escapes, and he is chased all over.”

        The war ends, but the little boy has nowhere to go. Then, Mr. Meyer says, he realizes “there is a country where all the Chaims go, and I will go there, too.”

        Mr. Meyer, who for many years was violinist of the famed LaSalle Quartet at CCM, identifies with the little boy, because he, too, was a young man who was “reborn” in a concentration camp. He found a new country — the United States — where he could pursue a musical career and live life as a free man.

        Mr. Meyer tells his story, as he related it to author Martin Goldsmith in The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany (John Wiley & Sons Inc.; $24.95).

        It was 1943; Mr. Meyer and his younger brother, Fritz, had been transported by cattle car to Auschwitz. His brother died soon after. Mr. Meyer, a teen-ager who had dropped from 140 to 96 pounds in two months, was brought in a weakened state to the prison hospital. He knew that he among those in the “selection” — selected to be gassed the next morning.

        The prison doctor struck up a conversation with him, asking what Mr. Meyer had done before the war. He said he was a violinist, who had studied in Dresden, Prague and Berlin. As an 8-year-old prodigy, he had performed with the Berlin Philharmonic.

        The doctor was from Breslau. When the teen noted that he had performed the Tartini Violin Concerto with the Kulturbund Orchestra in 1937 in Breslau, it struck a chord with the doctor.

        “This doctor recognized me, from having been at the concert which I played in Breslau,” Mr. Meyer recalls. “He exchanged me for a dead body.”

        The doctor returned with a corpse, which he threw down on the bed. He slung Mr. Meyer over his shoulder, brought him to another barracks and exchanged their file card numbers.

        Mr. Meyer was again among the living.

        “I was reborn,” says the violinist, who lives in East Walnut Hills.

        Other stories told by Mr. Prager also ring true. The third story, “A Bottle of Brandy,” reminds the violinist of the maid who had been like a member of his family, when he was growing up in Dresden.

        “When we were in a camp, still in Dresden, she came in the middle of the night to bring us food,” he says.

        The gentile woman, who had been terrified of a mouse, risked her life for young Henry and his brother, by taking a tram, then trekking through woods to deliver them food through a fence. She would then spend the night alone in the woods, until the next tram came at 5 a.m., risking recognition by the tram driver.

        “The courage was absolutely remarkable,” Mr. Meyer says.

        Then there is the final story, where the entire population of a little Jewish village is told to assemble outside the city limits, on the edge of the pit where they will be shot. The Gestapo tell them to sing “a Jewish ditty.” The people are perplexed, wondering how can they sing when they are about to die.

        “But someone starts off, and the others chime in,” Mr. Meyer says. “It becomes contagious, and soon everybody sings and dances. The S.S. say, What's that? Stop, or you're dead!'

        “But we danced!,” he says.

        This story brings back memories of Mr. Meyer's stint in the band of Birkenau concentration camp, where he played marches as the prisoners left the camp in the morning and returned in the evening. The absurdity was that, because there are no violins in bands, Mr. Meyer convinced the Gestapo that he was a virtuoso of the cymbals.

        It saved his life.

        “I am a winner. With me, all their effort failed,” he says. “By the fabulous opportunities which are given to you in this country, I have made a very respectable career. I'm very thankful for it.

        “Of course, the loss of one's total family cannot be changed. But basically I am an optimistic person. I always have been.”

        The music by Mr. Schoenfield, a native of Detroit, is Klezmer music — the music of the Eastern European Jews. It was written in 1995 for the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Mr. Meyer is narrator on the recording, Paul Schoenfield Chamber Music, on Albany Records ($15.99).
       

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