2023-09-26 16:35:26
Salomo Margulies was born in Chemnitz in April 1923 into a Jewish family. His father owned a knitwear factory with an attached business in the city, which was then known for its textile industry. When he was 15 years old, his mother sewed a wad of money into his shirt and sent him to Berlin. He was supposed to buy four tickets for a ship to Palestine. The family wanted to flee Nazi Germany there in 1939. But the ships were fully booked, so instead Solomon returned home with four tickets from Lufthansa. The family arrived in Palestine before the outbreak of World War II. Their belongings, including the family piano, soon followed by ship.
Today the piano is located at the Yad Vashem International Holocaust Memorial in Israel. Salomo Margulies, who called himself Shlomo Margaliot after he escaped, handed it over to Yad Vashem in 2016 along with more than 1,000 personal documents and photos. He said: “The piano looks and sounds like a typical instrument, but in its tones lies a story of resistance and survival.” Now Shlomo Margaliot died in September at the age of 100 in a nursing home in Kfar Saba, a small town Israeli town near Tel Aviv.
Advertisement | Scroll to continue reading
But the piano is coming back to Chemnitz. Together with documents and photographs from the Margulies family, the instrument will be on display from October 4th in the exhibition “From Chemnitz. A piano” can be seen in the art collections at Theaterplatz. He considers it a great honor that the piano, which Shlomo Margaliot once rescued from Chemnitz with other items, is returning to the city of his birth, said Chemnitz Mayor Sven Schulze. For Margaliot, the instrument was a symbol of his childhood, which was associated with terrible memories, fear for his life and that of his parents, and flight from his homeland. “This week I wanted to speak on the phone with Shlomo Margaliot, a conversation I was looking forward to. What would he have told me about Chemnitz almost 100 years ago, about his arduous journey that saved his life?”
Today there is again a Jewish community in Chemnitz
Sven Schulze continued: “After more than 100 years, his voice has unfortunately fallen silent, but his piano continues to play his story, which began in April 1923 in Chemnitz. Hopefully for many generations to come. Because it remains important to constantly remember and warn about the atrocities of the Nazi regime so that they never happen again.” The city of Chemnitz will honor Shlomo Margaliot’s memory with this exhibition. He is happy that there is a Jewish community in Chemnitz again today. The exhibition reminds us of how important it is to take a stand and stand for democracy against any form of racism and extremism.
Shlomo Margaliot himself never returned to Chemnitz.
#piano #returns #Chemnitz #story