UPCOMING
“Giving Music a
Face”
ON VIEW FEB. 5, 2016 THROUGH
JULY 31, 2016
CENTRAL GALLERY
With the exhibition “Giving Music a
Face,” Holocaust Museum Houston will
feature more than 25 of Berlin artist and
Holocaust Survivor David Friedmann’s
“lost- musician” portraits from the 1920s.
As a leading press artist in the 1920s,
Friedmann sketched hundreds of celebrated
personalities from the arts, music, theater,
sports, politics and industry. He was also
a violinist and had a connection with
the well-known musicians of the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO), many of
whom were Jewish. With the Nazi rise to
power in 1933, many of these careers
came to a tragic end. Some musicians fled,
others were deported to concentration
camps and murdered. Friedmann fled to
Prague, only to be deported to the Lodz
Ghetto, where his wife and daughter
perished. He was then deported to
Auschwitz but survived because of the
lucky coincidence of the violin.
In September, 1944, while in line at roll
call, an announcement was made for the
need of musicians for the orchestra of the
German command. He volunteered and
was sent to the sub-camp Gleiwitz I to
compete with virtuosos from the Prague
Philharmonic Orchestra, but he was not
chosen, putting him in great danger. To
save himself, he painted a mural across
the barracks walls, impressing the SS
officers and saving his life.
After liberation, he returned to Prague
and produced his first cycle of Holocaust
art. He remarried and fled communist
Czechoslovakia to Israel, finally immigrating
to the United States. Friedmann continued
to depict the horrors of the Holocaust in
his powerful series “Because They Were
Jews!” He died in 1980 in St. Louis at
the age of 86. Friedmann is recognized
internationally, and his art is displayed in
the permanent exhibition at Yad Vashem
in Jerusalem, among other institutions and
museums.
Museum members are invited to a free
preview reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
on Feb. 4, 2016. To renew a membership
or to join and attend, visit
e-mail or call 713-
527-1640.
Friedmann’s works illustrate the inherent
value and promise of one artist who
produced before, during and after
events leading up to and including
WWII. Few exhibitions focus on the rich,
productive lives many artists had before
the Holocaust. Portraits on display
include Szymon Goldberg, a violinist and
concertmaster of the BPO, the composer
Arnold Schoenberg, cellist Gregor
Piatigorsky and conductor, pianist George
Szell. Goldberg was a concertmaster for
the BPO. Later, he was a conductor for
various orchestras.
Friedmann’s oeuvre of 2,000 works was
looted by the Gestapo in Berlin and by the
Nazi authorities in Prague.
Photo: Szymon (Simon) Goldberg, 1924 (1909-
1993, violinist). Portrait by David Friedmann.
“On Our Watch:
ISIS and the Yazidi
of Northern Iraq”
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 2, 2015
6:30 P.M. TO 8:00 P.M.
ALBERT AND ETHEL HERZSTEIN
THEATER
Since the rise of the self-proclaimed
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)
in August 2014, the Yazidi community has
been in the midst of a human rights crisis.
Members of the Houston Yazidi community
will join Holocaust Museum Houston staff
to provide a brief history of the Yazidi
religion and culture and a panel discussion
about the current perilous situation of
the community. ISIS is said to have killed
more than 6,000 Yazidi men, women and
children and kidnapped an additional
6,000 members of the community, mostly
women and female children. The Yazidi
population of Northern Iraq is now
displaced to refugee camps, and they
are suffering from lack of food, water,
bad weather, mental and physical health
conditions, as well as a lack of education
facilities. Admission is free, but advance
registration is requested. To RSVP online,
visit