Photo: APF Czech Radio
July 3 marks 50 years since the death of the phenomenal Czech conductor Karel Ančerl. Ančerl was a Holocaust survivor, artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic for 18 years, and later a 1968 emigré to Canada.
Karel Ančerl’s career was developing promisingly even before the Second World War, when he became the conductor at the popular Prague Osvobozené Theatre.
But the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Hitler’s Germany, as for most people of Jewish origin, brought great hardship to Ančerl. Being dismissed from his post and having his family property confiscated was just the beginning.
He and his family were sent to the Jewish ghetto in Terezín, and then deported to Auschwitz in October 1944. Ančerl survived, but tragically his wife and young son did not.
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