A Rock Opera About The Holocaust? Yes, Really.
Jeremy Schonfeld performs in New York City in March, 2010. Image by Jeffrey Utberg / Getty Images
Jeremy Schonfeld didn’t exactly intend to create a multimedia rock opera about the Shoah and the emotional trauma it inflicted across generations. All he wanted to do was write an album in honor of his father, Gustav Schonfeld, a survivor of Auschwitz who passed away in 2011.
Yet, according to Schonfeld, the result of this endeavor, “Iron and Coal,” draws at least as much from The Who’s “Tommy” and Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” as from Jewish mourning traditions and Yiddish folk songs. The rock opera, which tells a story about the psychic toll of Nazi genocide, premieres at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda on May 3 with Schonfeld in a starring role. It’s a large-scale endeavor, including, according to the Strathmore’s website, “a rock band, full orchestra, and over 120 adult and youth voices.” As Schonfeld told the Forward, in creating the work he was willing to take risks where he thinks other storytellers might have shied away.
“When I set out to create [‘Iron and Coal’], part of finding the specific voice [was] to really go musically where the story need[ed] to take me,” Schonfeld said. “Some of the music is soaring, some is angry and aggressive, some of it is sad.”
The story of “Iron and Coal” is not strictly about Gustav’s experience in the camps. Instead, as Schonfeld told the Forward, at the heart of the narrative is the powerful bond of a father and son living in a St. Louis community that included a large number of Holocaust survivors. “Iron and Coal” investigates, in parallel, Gustav’s efforts to deal with his trauma while starting a new life as a scientist and physician in the United States, and his son’s struggles with, in his words, “growing up underneath the shadow” of Auschwitz.
Sometimes, the “emotional rollercoaster,” as Schonfeld describes it, leads to devastating lows, as on “Winterreise,” which incorporates the Yizkor memorial prayer with home movie footage and visuals of silhouettes draped in shadow. Elsewhere, as on “Yet,” the music builds to surprising emotional crescendos.
Schonfeld’s hope for the performance is that the audience “won’t know where we’re going each time we start a new tune,” as he and his fellow musicians traverse “rock, theatrical, jazz, and classical.” He wants to create emotional catharsis, and relay a stubborn hopefulness; after all, Schonfeld remarked that, even though his father bore unimaginable trauma, he lived “a rich and full life.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
