Ilse Weber

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Ilse Weber
Born
Ilse Herlinger

11 January 1903
Witkowitz, Margraviate of Moravia, Austria-Hungary
Died6 October 1944 (1944-10-07) (aged 41)
Auschwitz-Birkenau, German-occupied Poland
NationalityCzech
Occupation(s)Poet and writer
Known forGerman-language songs for Jewish children

Ilse Weber (11 January 1903 – 6 October 1944), née Herlinger, was born in

Theresienstadt
and murdered in the gas chambers, along with her son, Tommy. Her most popular book was "Mendel Rosenbusch: Tales for Jewish Children" (1929).

Life

Weber was born on 11 January 1903 in Vítkovice and she learned to speak Czech and German.[1]

Her mother taught her about music and their Jewish religion and her father died when she was ten. Within a few years her writing was being published in the magazine Das Kränzchen.[1]

In 1930 she married Willi Weber. They lived in

Auschwitz
.

The Webers arrived at the

Theresienstadt concentration camp in February 1942. Ilse Weber worked as a night nurse in the camp's children's infirmary, doing everything she could for the young patients without the aid of medicine (which was forbidden to Jewish prisoners). She wrote around 60 poems during her imprisonment and set many of them to music, employing deceptively simple tunes and imagery to describe the horror of her surroundings. In performance she accompanied herself on guitar. Her songs include "Lullaby," "I Wandered Through Theresienstadt," "The Lidice Sheep," "Wiegala," "And the Rain Falls," and "Avowal of Belief."[3]

When her husband was deported to Auschwitz in October 1944, Ilse Weber volunteered to join him with their son Tommy because she didn't want to break up the family. She and the boy were murdered in the gas chamber on arrival[4] Willi Weber survived them by 30 years.[4] when it was reported that she sang her lullaby to her child as they went to be murdered.[5]

Years later, on April 15, 2018, one of her patients from Theresienstadt, Aviva Bar-On sang, without a written trace and only from memory, one of Ilse Weber's songs during a concert in Jerusalem. The whole event was a tribute to Nazi concentration camp victims who had composed music.[6]

Writings

Her first book was "Mendel Rosenbusch: Tales for Jewish Children" (1929).[1] The title character, a kind elderly man, mysteriously receives a magic coin that enables him to become invisible at will. He uses this power to perform anonymous good deeds for his neighbors. Weber's sharp observations and gentle humor make these stories appealing for all ages.

Her early fiction, dating from 1925, was collected as "The Scooter Race and Other Stories" (1930).[1]

Weber's Theresienstadt poetry was collected in the book "Inside These Walls, Sorrow Lives" (1991). Her songs have been frequently recorded, particularly "Lullaby," most recently by mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and Christian Gerhaher (2007). In 2008, the Munich-based publisher Carl Hanser Verlag brought out a collection of her letters and poems entitled: Wann wohl das Leid ein Ende hat (When will the suffering come to an end) collected by the German historian Ulrike Migdal. Weber's surviving son Hanuš participated in a cultural program commemorating his mother's work in Berlin on 22 May 2008. He is the author of a book on her life, Ilse: A Love Story Without a Happy Ending.[7]

Her song "Wiegala" is used in Paula Vogel's play, Indecent.

Works

Writing

  • Märchen (Fairy Tales), 1928
  • Die Geschichten um Mendel Rosenbusch: (Mendel Rosenbusch: Tales for Jewish Children), 1929
  • Das Trittrollerwettrennen (The Scooter Race), 1936
  • In deinen Mauern wohnt das Leid: Gedichte aus dem KZ Theresienstadt (Inside These Walls, Sorrow Lives: Poems from Theresienstadt Concentration Camp), 1991
  • Wann wohl das Leid ein Ende hat (When Will Suffering End), 2008; ed. Ulrike Migdal,
    ISBN 978-3-446-23050-7
  • "Dancing on a Powder Keg": Ilse Weber's Letters and Poems; Translated from the German, and Foreword by Michal Schwartz, Ruth Bondy on Theresienstadt, Afterword by Ulrike Migdal; Bunim & Bannigan, Ltd, in association with Yad Vashem, 2017,
    ISBN 978-1-933480-39-8

Selected recordings

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Ilse Weber, née Herlinger". Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-1-933480-39-8
    .
  3. ^ "Music and the Holocaust, YIVO encyclopedia". 2008. Retrieved 2012-11-16.
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-0-8283-2064-1
    .
  5. ^ Winston, Robert (30 January 2020). "Gene Editing". Hansard. 801 – via UK gov.
  6. ^ Flynn, Meagan (April 17, 2018). "How thousands of songs composed in concentration camps are finding new life". The Washington Post. Washington. Retrieved November 29, 2020.
  7. ISBN 978-91-7910-561-7
    .

Further reading
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