Remembering the Holocaust inspires accordion album

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/05/2020 (1837 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Steinbach musician has dedicated his latest album to the survivors of the Holocaust. Art Rempel released Musical Reflections from Zion, an accordion album made up entirely of traditional Jewish music.

The project came to him after attending speeches made by Susan Garfield and Angela Orosz-Richt, both holocaust survivors. It also came from a childhood where he was profoundly affected by the holocaust.

“As a child during that era, while on my grandfather’s homestead in southern Manitoba, I have traumatic memories from listening to the BBC broadcasts from London on the shortwave radio,” the 83-year-old Rempel wrote in the album’s liner notes. “These broadcasts described the horrors of what was happening in Europe.”

Rempel was eight-years-old when the war ended, and he still vividly recalls the scenes as concentration camps were liberated.

“I was quite affected by what went on there,” he said. “I was scared and fearful, and also we felt awful for the Jews… the ripping families apart.”

“I still remember when the Russians liberated Auschwitz and Dachau, and some of the other ones.”

That engrained in him an opposition to antisemitism, and said it’s important to remember the hatred of Jews came from many places. “A lot of that was done by Christian churches,” he said.

He also fondly remembers meeting Jewish people he said were very important to rural residents.

“After the depression in Manitoba, people had a hard time making a living there,” he said.

His father had a trucking business and small store, and they often welcomed Jewish peddlers into their home for the night, putting up their horses in the barn.

“I grew up fast because we had a hard life,” he said.

Rempel still recalls how the peddlers would come out and buy chickens from area farmers. His father would then truck them to Winnipeg where they would be slaughtered and sold at the Jewish Market, then located on North Main.

This is Rempel’s fifth album, although it’s very different than his first four.

And taking it on was a massive project.

Rempel had to first research Jewish music, and then learn how to play it.

He started with Jewish friends, finding the music that would be suitable for an album. Shoulder surgery in May of 2019 complicated things, and though his surgeon had told him he wouldn’t be recovered for a full year, he started playing in November anyway.

“It was a matter of urgency for me to do one Jewish CD, and I loved the music after I started playing it,” he said.

Playing the accordion did cause him a lot of pain. “It hadn’t healed completely properly but I can play, so I’m happy,” he said. “I’m not a young puppy. Some of it will hurt anyway.”

Minor scales and minor keys play a big role in that type of music, and Rempel even took lessons to help him adjust.

“I grew up with country dances, polkas, waltzes, fox trots…,” he said. “This is different. You have to develop an ear for it.”

The album includes Hatikvah, the Israel National Anthem, two selections from Fiddler on the Roof, Sunrise Sunset and Matchmaker and a Russian Jewish song called Tumbalalaika. It also includes Siso Et Yerusalayim, Oseh Shalom, Dayenu (Passover Song), Tzena Tzena,, Expectations, Hevenu Shalom Alechem, Mazel and Hava Nagila.

While the project to play Jewish music is new, his love of the accordion goes back to his time as a small boy, when acquiring such an instrument was impossible.

“I’d hear people play the accordion either on the radio, or sometimes a band would come into a local community,” he said. “I sat there and watched that accordion all night.”

In fact, he said his elders joked with him that he was missing out on the pretty girls, because of his attention to the accordion.

He made sacrifices to acquire his first instrument.

At 15-years-old, he and his older brother Bill moved to Winnipeg, where he got a job at Eaton’s Toy Land. Making $13 per week, and paying for room and board, he purchased his first accordion for $100, making payments of $10 per month.

But the host of the rooming house on Edmonton St. didn’t care for his enthusiasm.

“I practiced until I got kicked out,” he said.

He then moved to Balmoral, close to his instructor’s house.

“I figured if things started heating up because I practiced too much then I’d go across the street,” he said. “He said that he’d let me in anytime.”

He chuckled as he recalled what happened next. “I did get removed from two houses for practicing,” he said.

A few years later he purchased his second accordion for $1,000. “That was the most expensive accordion I could buy in those days,” he said.

The accordion featured French or Wet Tuning, and was purchased from a musician who played the Playboy Club in Florida. “When I bought it, it still had Playboy rabbits on here,” he said of the case.

But then life got in the way of playing. He went back to school at 23, got married and began his career. It wasn’t until retirement that he invested significant time in playing.

The passion has remained strong however.

“I love accordions, I always wanted to be more proficient at it but it is what it is,” he said. “Now it’s almost over. I’ll play as much as I can until I don’t play anymore.”

Rempel hopes his CD can bring some light into the lives of the Jewish people, particularly the Holocaust survivors.

“I believe that we need to spend a little more time in our history in school, teaching exactly events like that,” he said. “It tells you about what the human condition is like, how cruel people can get to one another and by educating children, I think it forms attitudes that might avoid them from being anti-Semitic or racist of any kind.”

Rempel’s album is available at the Mennonite Heritage Village and Hildebrand Music in Steinbach.