Vatican to Hold First Concert in Memory of Holocaust Victims

The Vatican will hold a concert in memory of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, a spokesman announced, in a further indication of warming ties between the Holy See and world Jewry.

The concert will be held at the Vatican on Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, which this year falls on April 7.

In making the announcement, a Vatican statement described the Holocaust as “a terrible abyss which has thrown a black light on the terrifying depth of human evil.”

A concert, the statement said, would be the best way to commemorate the Shoah, since music is the best way of reaching people’s souls.

“The intent of the concert is to unite the hearts of those who hear it in the memory of terrible events, which should never be forgotten so that they are never repeated,” the statement said.

The announcement of the Vatican concert came just six weeks after the Vatican and Israel signed their historic agreement to establish full diplomatic relations.

Rabbi A. James Rudin, interreligious affairs director for the American Jewish Committee, who was involved in planning the event, said the concert demonstrates the pope’s commitment to the furthering of Catholic-Jewish relations.

“It’s one more sign of the enormous sea change that’s taken place between Catholics and Jews,” Rudin said.

The concert, to be held in the Vatican’s modernistic Paul VI auditorium, will be attended by Pope John Paul II, Rome’s chief rabbi, Elio Toaff, and other senior religious officials.

It will include “Kol Nidre” by Max Bruch, the adagio of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and Psalm 92, as arranged by Franz Schubert for the inauguration of a new synagogue in Vienna in 1826.

Concluding the concert will be selections from Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony, which includes the recitation of the Jewish prayer for the dead, and two of his Chichester Psalms, which also contain passages in Hebrew.

The concert will be performed by the London Philharmonic orchestra in conjunction with the Vatican’s Cappella Giulia Choir.

Leading the orchestra will be Gilbert Levine, an American conductor who has spent more than three years attempting to arrange such a concert.

Originally, he had hoped to be able to have it outdoors, in Rome’s historic Jewish ghetto.

Levine, whose wife is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor from Slovakia, served for four years as director of the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra in Poland, where he became involved in interreligious issues.

In Krakow, he was instrumental in setting up and conducting several concerts at the 19th-century Temple Synagogue. The concerts were dedicated to Holocaust victims and to strengthening dialogue between Jews and Poles.

In addition to the pope and Toaff, Holocaust survivors, cardinals, diplomats and other prominent figures are expected to attend the concert.