L, : By SEAN GRIFFIN
in Jaldati and Eberhard Rebl-
ing remember the many times more
than 35 years ago when they stood
at the piano, the room around them
filled with people who had come
secretly, in ones and twos to.attend
these clandestine concerts, and per-
) formed the works that were ‘‘for-
bidden”’ by the Nazi occupiers —
the Yiddish songs of resistance, the
compositions of Mendelssohn,
Chopin, Shostakovitch . . . Those
in the audience had no tickets, only
the whispered invitation of a friend
or a neighbor; the concert hall was
only a room in an apartment or a
house. But the voices of the
resistance were heard all over
Holland as hundreds of artists like
Jaldati and Rebling gave their secret
concerts in defiance of the fascist
invader.
_ Since then, there have been hun-
dreds of concerts — in Prague with
Paul Robeson in 1949, in three ma-
jor continental tours of Europe and
| Asia and a just-concluded tour of
| several Canadian cities — but, in a
sense, each has been an echo of
those concerts of the resistance in
Nazi-occupied Holland. For Lin
and Eberhard, their act, like their
| lives, has been dedicated to the
| struggle against fascism — and for
peace.
| Here in Vancouver for a concert
in tribute to Anne Frank last week,
they talked for several hours with
| the Tribune. And as they touched
|} on the work of artists in socialist
}society — jn the German
| Democratic Republic where they
| now live — they turned again to
| those days of the resistance when
| their music had suddenly become a
vital part of the anti-fascist move-
jment.
| Following the armored sweep
across the Netherlands, Belgium
fJand France in May and June of
41940, the Nazis proceeded to im-
pose Nazi laws on the occupied
countries. For artists it meant sub-
jugation to the Nazi cultural
organizations, first established in
Germany by Joseph Goebbels.
. “The Nazis attempted to impose
the fascist cultural organizations on
) the artists of Holland,’’ Lin relates.
By that time, she was already a
| distinguished dancer and singer ac-
| claimed in three countries. Her hus-
band, Eberhard Rebling, a German
| who had fled the Nazis in 1936 only
| to face them again, was himself a
_ well-known pianist and critic.
“Many artists were forced into
the ‘kulturkammer’ (the various
chambers of music, theatre imposed
_ by the fascists) for fear of having no

work. But thousands of others
refused.”
Together they formed an

underground organization of ar-
tists, the ‘Free Artists’? which
dedicated itself to the anti-fascist
movement. It published a regular
_ newspaper, first mimeographed and
later printed, and even paid small
salaries to performing artists. And
the clandestine concerts organized
by its members were the heartbeat
of the resistance. !
“There were thousands of these
concerts held secretly all over the
} country in houses and apartments,”’
they remember, adding that the
| word was passed from one to
| another. Trust was implicit.
_ But no one ever betrayed the
| whereabouts of a concert to the
police or the SS.”’
_ Even the material performed was
-asymbol of defiance against the oc-
upiers and their fascist culture.
in, a Dutch Jew who, like
housands of others would soon
ace mass persecution, sang Yiddish
songs, echoing generations of strug-
gle against oppression. Eberhard
played the works of Mendelssohn,
anned by the Nazis because he was
Jew; of Chopin, banned because
his part in the -Polish revolu-
nary movement of the century

7

EBERHARD REBLING (at piano), LIN JALDATI ... . their music had its beginnings in the anti-fascist

movement.

before; and of Shostakovitch and-

Khachaturian, the Soviet com-
posers. :

Between the concerts there was
the other work of the resistance.
For Lin, it was the daily risk of
working with others in obtaining
false identity papers for comrades
in the resistance movement already
on the Nazis’ list. For Eberhard,
there was the responsibility of en-
suring safe passage for Jewish
children from one place to another.
‘*And all the time we were in danger
just because we were living
together,’’ he adds. His marriage to
a Jewish woman ‘‘violated’’ the
Nazis’ racist laws.

Then, suddenly, came arrest.

“On the 10th of July, 1944, a

whole unit of Dutch SS surrounded .

the house,’’ Eberhard relates. Of
the 17 people living there, all but
one, who was away, were arrested.

“We were only given enough
time to take our 3-year-old
daughter to a doctor’s house,’’ says
Lin, who adds that someone had

betrayed them. Then the police:

began their search of the house, a
search which continued for three
days.

At police headquarters, after his
interrogation, Eberhard was told he
would be sent before a military
tribunal. The Gestapo had already
placed him under sentence of death.

Lin was sent first to Westerbork
— the concentration camp in
Holland from which Jews were sent
to other camps in Germany and
elsewhere — and later to Auschwitz
and Bergen-Belsen. With her went
Anne Frank whose famous diary
told of a Jewish family in hiding
from the Nazis, and Anne’s sister
Margot and her mother.

Then on July 14 — he remembers
the date well because it was Bastille
Day, commemorating the French
Revolution — Eberhard escaped.
“The police car I had gone in,
together with my sister-in-law, had
stopped in a working class district
of Amsterdam, ‘to pick up someone

else who had been arrested. There
was only one guard watching us and
he had the window of the car open
because it was very hot.

‘““My sister-in-law grabbed the
guard around the neck, just as I
leaped out the open window,”’ he
recalls, the details still vivid in his
mind. The guard tried to grab my
coat but it ripped in half and I fled
down the street.”’

Inside an open door, he asked a
woman tending her baby to take the
telltale coat and-get rid of it. She
took it without a word and he
returned to the street. Hours later,
after he had made his way to a
friend’s house, he had a new identi-
ty.

Such was. Nazi
however, that only an hour after his
escape, the SS appeared at the door
of the doctor’s house where his
daughter had been sent, intending
to take her asa hostage to secure
Eberhard’s return. But miraculous-
ly, she had been ‘‘kidnapped”’ only

-a short while before by comrades

who feared for her life following
her parents’ arrest.

It would be almost a year —
following the liberation of the
camps in the summer of 1945 —
before Eberhard and Lin and their
daughter were re-united. Even at
that, the horrors of the death camps
that had claimed the lives of
millions, including Anne Frank and
her sister and mother, had only just
passed Lin by. Near death from
typhus and malnutrition, she weigh-
ed only 28 kg — less than 62
pounds.

For seven years in Holland, the
two artists threw themselves into
their work. For Lin there were
dance and song performances in
numerous countries — Denmark,
Sweden, Switzerland,
Czechoslovakia, Poland. Eberhard
continued his work as a
musicologist, publishing several
books and contributing asa critic to
the Dutch Communist newspaper.
For the first years after the war, his

=.

barbarity, _

—Sean Griffin photo

concert appearances were many and

varied — until the Cold War closed
the door to those who continued to
dedicate themselves to anti-fascism,
finding new hope and inspiration in
the growth of the socialist world.

In 1952, they moved to the GDR,
a state founded on the affirmation
that fascism would be extirpated
forever from German soil. The
Socialist Unity Party had asked
Eberhard to immigrate to take a
leading part in the cultural re-
juvenation of the’country.

Now, nearly three decades later,
Lin and Eberhard’s part in the anti-
fascist struggle, their commitment
to peace and a deeply humanist art,
remains undiminished. Both con-
tinue to be leading figures in the
cultural life of the country. Both
are activists in the multi-million
member GDR Peace Council; Lin
adds to that her membership in the
GDR Committee for Human Rights

The art of the resistance lives on

while Eberhard is a member of
parliament, one of a number of
representatives of the national
association of artists. Both are long
time members of the Socialist Unity
Party.

More than anything, they see
their work as artists continuing in
the new artists of the GDR, who are
the inheritors of the legacy of anti-
fascism.

“Culture in socialist society oc-
cupies a much biger place than in
any other system,’’ Lin affirms,
emphasizing what is-for her fun-
damental: ‘‘You must have art and
culture as you must have bread.”

For the people of the GDR, it is
also fundamental. In a country of
some 70 million, there are 4,000
singing groups and 81 symphonies
and theatre orchestras of interna-
tional calibre.

And then there are the thousands
of amateur groups. ‘‘Every
workers’ brigade has cultural pro-
gram as part of its work program,”’
Lin notes. ‘‘There are cultural clubs
with money and facilities. And
every two years. there are huge -
festivals in which the best of these
groups perform in concert.”’

Perhaps most significant is the
support given composers, sculptors
and other creative artists — in a
way that has given real substance to
the meaning of ‘‘people’s art.’

“‘Most composers and’ other ar-
tists work on commission to
workers’ groups, trade unions or
other organizations,’’ Eberhard ex-
plains. ‘‘They are all freelancers but
they have so much work that they
are booked up for two years or
more.

“When a new building goes up,
the trade union will commission
new paintings and sculptures; when
an anniversary is to be marked, a
song or perhaps a cantata or or-
chestral work will be commission-
ed.’’ Every organization has funds
especially allocated for the commis-
sioning of new works of art.

In addition, artists do work on
their own, responding to their own
creative wills — sometimes creating
works that are ‘‘silly’’, Eberhard
notes, but also creating works of
profound value.

Perhaps more than anything else, °
the artists of the GDR reflect the
commitment of millions to peace,
Lin and Eberhard say. It is seen in
the sculptures that are everywhere,
in the art and paintings, in the hun-
dreds of concerts that are held all
over the country.

Those concerts are not held
secretly as they were in Nazi-
occupied Holland. But they are just
as much a vital part of the life and
struggle of the people as they were
then. A lifetime of work by artists
like Lin Jaldati and Eberhard Rebl-
ing has been the guarantee of that.

RECITAL
Soloists of the
Moscow State Philharmonic

with our own

ELEANOR COLLINS

Accompanist Bob Murphy
S

Sunday, May 20 - 7:30 p.m.
Queen Elizabeth Theatre

Tickets at
Vancouver Centre and Eatons outlets

All tickets $3.00

Ausp. Canada-USSR Association

"PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 11, 1979—Page 3
ap GS t—SRe El WAGER E SRR