MASCHA’S SONG

Two good friends, Mascha Benya-Matz and Dr. Hadassah Guttmann are having lunch in a café in New York City. They are both accomplished musicians, Mascha as a classical and opera singer and Hadassah as a brilliant pianist. Hadassah shares the history of her family’s escape from Poland – her father, Jacob who was one of the last Jews to leave the town where Auschwitz Camp was constructed and her mother, Rivka, whose family left Tarnow for the United States shortly before the town became the first to deport all the Jews to death camps.

Mascha, born in Lithuania, showed an early prowess in singing and in the late 1920’s went to Berlin to study in the famed Stern Music Conservatory. In 1933, when Hitler assumed power, Jews were expelled from German cultural institutions and forbidden to participate in performance with Germans. Kurt Singer, who had been director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, eventually through negotiations with high level Nazi officials, was able to establish the Judische Kulturbund, which provided employment for as many as 70,000 Jewish artists, many of whom were highly acclaimed in their fields.

In the play, Mascha relates to her friend, Hadassah, the story of the beginnings of her operatic career with the Kulturbund, where she performed roles such as Gilda from “Rigoletto” and Norina from “Don Pascuale”. When in 1938, Kristallnacht took place, Mascha, along with many other artists from the Kulturbund, fled the nation. Resettling in New York City with relatives, she and her uncle worked to get her family out of Lithuania, gaining visas for their entrance into the U.S. However, the communication lines fell silent. After the war, a neighbor from her hometown visited Mascha in New York and told of the mass execution of the Jews in Mascha’s hometown. Mascha was devastated by the news but eventually decided to dedicate her talents and abilities to bringing Yiddish music back to the world. She worked with great singers such as Richard Tucker, Jan Pierce and others, traveling the world to promote the great music of eastern European Jewry.