Translator: Federica Vignale Reviewer: Michele Gianella
"My name is Tvikatz.
I was born in a little shtetl, a Jewish village,
in Belarus in 1919.
When I was young,
I started to teach Hebrew and playing the violin,
but during the war I had to escape the ghetto,
and I joined the resistance movement.
So I could save more than 200 people.
But then, when I lost all my family, I decided to immigrate to Palestine
where I met on the ship Esther,
the only survival, together with her brother,
that survived the Holocaust.
We got married,
and three years later our daughter Dina was born."
This was the story of my grandfather.
I have a lot in common with my grandfather.
As you can all see,
we both lost our hair when we were young.
We both played classical music and taught Hebrew when we were young.
In fact his name is my middle name, Tzvi, Eyal Tzvi,
In my case, classical music
was an extremely serious aspect of my life
since childhood.
So serious from the age of 13:
concerts, touring, competitions, radio, television, success.
But, it became very, very stressful,
since expectations were too high for a small child like me,
and education much too severe for me.
So that at the age of 17
I fell into a depression, a real breakdown, but I didn't give up.
The first guidance was,
not think too much about yourself, think about others.
So I started teaching music and then, after a few years,
I decided to come to Italy
to give myself the last chance regarding music:
to learn with great masters,
that were really very good, but too academic and too rigid.
That was not good for me.
I stopped music totally
and I fell into a deep and long depression.
I slept for one whole year in bed.
But I meditated a lot and I started reading many books.
In one of them,
written by a very famous Jewish artist, Alejandro Jodorowsky,
he says in the preface:
"A nightingale sings better on his genealogical tree".
And that was fantastic for me.
Because my instrument, this little recorder,
is the instrument that recorded the sound of the birds, of the nightingale,
like that.
(Music)
But that was not what was missing in my life.
What was missing was the other part of Alejandro Jodorowsky: the roots.
I had to recuperate the story of my family,
which I did not know.
My roots.
I started a research.
I called all my grandparents.
Unfortunately,
I could not call Tzvi, my grandfather,
because he died when he was 29 years old in the war of independence
when my mother was only three months.
And also his wife Esther, she has developed mental instability.
So, I called my Romanian grandparents
and they told me amazing stories of their survival,
of their family that they lost,
stories of loss, stories of tragedy, of despair,
of guilt because they were alive and their family was not.
But they also told me beautiful stories of revival,
of hope, of recreation, of humanity.
But, mostly, I found out, for the first time, my culture:
the Eastern European culture,
the Jewish music, Yiddish songs, Kletzmer music,
the storytelling, that is part of the Jewish culture,
the theatre, the counters that sing in the synagogues.
So I started to take voice lessons.
I started to sing this music.
I started to play, with this little recorder, Kletzmer music.
I even acted in the most famous musical about Jewish life “Fiddler on the roof”
in the role of Perchick, the socialist revolutionary one.
So, now, with this new identity of my roots,
in 2000 the Italian government
decided to commemorate the day of 27th January,
the day of liberation of Auschwitz,
to commemorate the Holocaust, the Jewish,
but also the non-Jewish victims of the war.
So that was an amazing occasion for me.
I could participate, maybe contribute with my own process and with music.
Schools started new activities.
They learned about history in a different way now.
They met survivors, witnesses.
And, mostly, they started to see
all the known films we have all seen and were moved by.
But still, teachers told me something did not work.
The children are still divided emotionally,
they are not involved.
So I decided to make a show of my own, a didactic show,
in order to create young people who are more accessible, more tangible
to the theme of the Holocaust.
I decided that one of the most important things
is to bring history into their own lives, into their own towns.
We started workshops where children are doing a research, like I did,
regarding their families during the war.
They started to write testimonials that they didn't know
about their own families, and also about their own town.
For example, in a little town out of Florence
there is a great hero, sports hero, a cycling champion:
Bartali, Gino Bartali.
He saved more than 800 people
by driving his bicycle 200 kilometres each day,
hiding false documents in the sell of his bicycle,
risking his life.
So, he was a hero, a local hero,
and together with the testimonials of the youngsters,
I thought, why shouldn't they tell their own stories?
I don't want to tell their stories; they should become the new protagonists.
So, I started to create each time a new show:
every time, new students with new stories.
When I met the new musicians and dancers and singers,
but mostly the narrators,
I saw in them my own suffering for my childhood.
I saw this emotional fear and blocks.
They are afraid to speak up:
they are, maybe, used to emoticons today, to little tweets.
But, now, the Holocaust has such a big range of feelings.
The most evil experience of humanity,
but at the same time, sparks of glory and humanity together.
So, one has to really find the new authenticity in himself,
but they are young and unexperienced.
So, we started a theatrical laboratory,
where the shy people learn how to raise their voice
and the blocked people try a new way of expression in their face.
The people who don't move start to move their hands with pathos
and, by these little actions, a big change inside their heart comes out.
The next day, magic happens.
Everyone on stage, the students, who are in the public
are about to see their own friends speaking not only about the Holocaust,
but in this point, about themselves as well.
Since they have gone through a transformation,
an emotional and mental transformation.
It's really magical, in such a short time, to see this change.
In that moment, history and remembers
are not only regarding the past.
They are created in the present,
because young people
are bringing these emotions from their own inner life.
They become more convincing, more human themselves.
In this perspective, I could even say
that they are starting to create their own history
because history, if we think about it, is not only the past.
It is right now:
what we are doing now is what's going to be our future history.
Every action is a new history.
The known witnesses,
the old ones that we know, like Liliana Segre,
there are very few,
and they are one of the most important compasses
of humanity, of goodness.
Why is that?
Because they went through hell,
but they found new powers of humanity in order to transform this hell.
But in few years,
we will no longer have any witness with us.
And this is why, for me, it is so important,
after 30 years of such an inner struggle with myself and transformation,
to be honoured to work with thousands and thousands of students
that are, thanks to history and theatre and other arts,
are finding the capacities to be witnesses themselves.
Can you imagine that I, just by myself, after so many years,
have the honour to work with so many of them?
Telling them my story
but helping them to tell their own story in a very authentic and new way.
Can you imagine if each one
of these tens of thousands of students who saw the show
would do the same, would share stories with others?
We can create a new network of humanity.
So, what I believe is, in the end, to become a witness.
We need three main factors that we do in this show.
First, we have to know history.
We must know our own history better.
Then it is not enough, we have to process it.
We have to elaborate it in an emotional level.
And that is not enough as well.
I believe that theatre is very important.
But life, as Shakespeare said, is theatre.
So, the most important thing
is sharing this experience with other people.
And this, we don't do enough.
We speak a lot about our future, but not about the roots of our family.
So, as the Greek says, we have to know ourselves better
and then transform it in a dynamical way.
I believe that such a process
makes and transforms history into a lesson
where children, first and foremost, can make a choice.
They know their feelings better.
They know suffering better because they have expressed it.
It's more important that they know their true self,
and not only their nice feelings.
So, I think that when we share it,
as they do with their own friends in school,
then there is a real, authentic encouragement.
This is one way of encouraging other people to do a similar process.
So, I believe that we should all become, or all live, as witnesses.
I think it's really, in the end, a style of life
to be a witness, to bring past into a new horizon of the future.
So, let me ask you now,
how many of you, do know your own stories,
the stories of your families in the past, in the war?
Maybe some members of your family died in the war.
How many of you share this story, these feelings, even pain,
with your friends, with your siblings, with your children?
I think it could be a new way, for all of us,
to live and to give a new meaning to our past.
So, you know, the other grandparents of mine from Romania,
they were both cantors in the synagogue
so there is also even a song that speaks about this phenomenon.
When they sang, when the rabbi sang,
all the community sang, “zing zingen”.
When he danced, they all "Tansen"
when they were drunk and told stories and jokes,
like all the Jews do when they're drunk,
they do it together, they even went to sleep together.
"Schluffen schluffen".
But when the rabbi cried, and they had a lot to cry about,
they also cried together.
So, are we ready to do this little experiment?
Can we try to be a new community of witnesses?
Are we ready?
We can try to do it right now.
Yes?
Public: Yes!
E.L.: Okay.
So.
And this is the rabbi!
(Music)
(Applause)
Thank you so much.
(Applause)