How are YOU feeling when you play?

HOLOCAUST DOCUMENTARY OFFERS UNIQUE MOTIVATION TO ATHLETES AND TEAMS

What can a film about Jews rounded up and herded into a concentration camp where they were treated worse than dogs teach athletes about what it takes to play your best?

There are dozens of films offering a tale of inspiration to athletes, coaches, and pretty much everybody – films like “Rudy” and “Hoosiers” and “Rocky.”  They show us what it takes to succeed – to make dreams come true.

Some films have less to do with success and more with sheer survival.  One such story was the New York Times Best Seller “Unbroken” (which Angelina Jolie later made into a film) about Olympic track star Louie Zamperini, a World War 2 soldier who, when captured and treated viciously by his Japanese captors, made use of the mental fortitude he cultivated as a youth to survive his ordeal physically and mentally.

But while the Zamperini’s extraordinary mental toughness differentiates him from 99% of the population, the lessons from another World War Two themed film speak to each of us, whatever the level of our mental resoluteness.

“Defiant Requiem," the initiative of American conductor Murry Sidlin, tells the story of a group of Czech Jews who stood up to their Nazi captors, though not by calling on stores of mental toughness acquired over the years.

This is a story about an entirely different kind of survival, and a different sort of victory.

Beginning in 1942, the Nazis rounded up Czech Jews as well as others from as far away as the Netherlands and Denmark and crowded them into the old garrison town of Terezin, just outside of Prague. Overnight, these Jews were stripped of 

their freedom, their possessions, earthly comforts, and their very dignity.  Forced to engage in harsh labor up to 14 hours every day and crammed hundreds to a barrack, some tried to hold on to their essential humanity by turning to the arts.

Among them was a man named Rafael Schächter, an accomplished young pianist and conductor, who took with him to the Terezin Camp a copy of the score of Verdi’s Requiem. He located a piano in a basement of one of the buildings on the grounds and then set upon recruiting individuals of varying musical ability to form a choir to perform the work for other inmates – to the dismay of the Jewish leaders in the camp eager to keep a low profile.  In the darkest of days, Schächter found a way to help a seemingly helpless group to fight back, and found the perfect vehicle to do so.

Indeed, few knew that the Latin words of this masterpiece spoke about the revenge that would be obtained in the future upon those doling out such brutality and how they would one day be called to answer for their barbarism. Through this musical piece a small band of Jews were able to sing to their Nazi tormentors what they dared not say.

While this moving film will speak eloquently to any audience, it offers a particularly unique message to athletes and teams who are asked - or ask of themselves - to give their most inspired effort in each and every competition.

For what could be more motivating than to consider the words of the  young conductor looking to get a masterful performance from his beleaguered choir. As one of the few surviving members of that choir had recalled: “Schächter used to say to us, ‘The MOST important thing is how you are feeling when you sing.’”

(photo of Schachter conducting his choir inside Terezin)

For Schächter, the gifted and devoted conductor, the critical thing was to immerse yourself in the experience – the words and the music – so as to obtain the most inspired performance.

As it turned out, Schächter’s words proved life-giving. 

For the beleaguered prisoners who crowded into a cold basement night after night, following a grueling 12-14 hour day of brutal forced labor, subsisting on a meager daily diet of some watery broth and a scrap of bread, this artistic activity proved to be life-affirming. As one participant recalled, “Maybe it was my hearing, but when we were rehearsing I never heard my stomach growl.”

As another put it, “On the outside, it was their (the Nazis’) world but in the rehearsal room it was OUR world.”

To further capture the imagination and passion of his group – and amidst circumstances where people had no idea that they would soon be packed into cattle cars and sent east to Auschwitz and the gas chambers – Schächter would tell the people that they were “rehearsing for the day when we will sing Verdi accompanied by a full orchestra in a grand music hall in Prague.”

The Latin words which these Jews sang in rehearsal, in some 13 concerts to fellow prisoners and then in their final concert in front of their Nazi captors before they, too, were sent to Auschwitz, spoke of the redress of grievances which the wronged would come to know, and that the evil doers would one day be punished for their crimes. So each night’s rehearsal was, in fact, a moment to seek redemption and release from their brutal reality. 

Members of Rafael Schächter’s group found through music the occasion to rise up in the worst situation imaginable and to champion the best of themselves and of the human spirit. In the words of one of them, “The Nazis had our minds, but they could NEVER have our souls. And in the end, they didn’t succeed.  We survived.”

In one of the most moving lines of the film, one woman who had been a part of that choir said, “This will sound strange to say, but in the nightmarish conditions of Terezin we found hours of pure joy - if you can talk at all of joy in a concentration camp. The Requiem was a gift that I took with me from those days to the rest of my life.”

If people who have been sent to hell – and nearly all of them to their deaths  – could find joy in the most despairing of conditions, then what a great lesson for any athlete to take with them – or for any of us to take to our daily tasks – to find that same JOY each day in practice. To remember, as Schächter put it – “The MOST important thing is how you are feeling when you sing.”

To see the theatrical trailer of "Defiant Requiem" visit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgimWmMqav4