Two pals use music to honor their Holocaust pasts
Six years ago, Saul Dreier read about the death of renowned pianist and Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer, who said music sustained her through the darkest times in the camps.
At the time, Dreier, now 95, was a novice musician who hadn’t picked up an instrument in more than 60 years. But as a Holocaust survivor himself, the story sparked something in him — he decided to start a klezmer band.
He teamed with Ruby Sosnowicz, a fellow Polishborn survivor and accomplished professional musician. Their story unfolds in the poignant new documentary “Saul & Ruby’s Holocaust Survivor Band” (now streaming on Amazon Prime). It reveals how Dreier — who told The Post that his musical experience started with clapping spoons and playing drums to keep up morale in the camps — took the duo from playing modest community centers and libraries to eventually their home country, Poland.
Dreier, who moved to New York after the war, raised his family and eventually retired to South Florida, said everyone thought he was nuts when he told them he wanted to start a band.
“Because they told me I’m crazy, I’m going to do it,” said Dreier. He had a vision of using music to honor the Jews who were killed in World War II: “I want to play for the 6 million to hear us. I want to play for my parents.”
When he met 91-year-old Sosnowicz — who specializes in the accordion — their bond was instantaneous.
After the pair started playing together in 2014, they performed classics such as “Que Sera, Sera” and “Hava Nagila,” at local synagogues. Soon, however, they had moved onto tours in places like Cleveland and Hamilton, Canada. “When I play music I’m alive. Music is my life,” Sosnowicz says in the film.
Their determination and resilience led them to even greater venues. In 2015, the two landed a huge gig: playing the Kennedy Center’s
Millennium Stage in the nation’s capital.
“Sometimes I don’t believe I’m here,” Sosnowicz says in the film. “Music [kept] me alive when I was in the Holocaust times. Because when you play music, you forget that you have to eat.”
Added Dreier, “To survive in the camps is the miracle. I can’t comprehend how I survived, the way I was living and eating — the lice [were] eating me.”
They still had their sights set on performing abroad.
“We want to play in Auschwitz and Warsaw for the 6 million people who perished,” Dreier said. “It’s my biggest ambition in life.”
In 2016, they got to see that dream come true.
The pair raised money for a trip to Poland to play in the same concentration camps where they and their relatives were held as captives so many years before. In a move both beautiful and defiant, they set up on the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz: an act of solidarity with the dead.
On that same trip, they were invited to the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, where they met with government officials and shared their stories.
“To me, the most powerful message in the story is to persevere,” said Tod Lending, the film’s director. “It’s never too late to pursue your passion.”
For Dreier, the most memorable moment of the trip was an act of weather. “When I walked into Treblinka where my mother perished, the rain started,” Dreier said. “It’s almost as if all 6 million were crying.”