Composed by: Pavel Haas

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Voicing: TTBB

Event/Holiday: Holocaust Memorial

Language: Hebrew

keyword: Terezin, Do not Mourn

Difficulty: moderately challenging

Country: Czech, Israel

Solos: none

Instruments: none

Lyrics: D. Shimonowitz

Publisher: Bote & Bock

Year composed: 1942

Timing: 2:30

Tempo: moderate

First Line: al sefod

description: In November 1941, shortly after invading Czechoslovalcia, the Nazis evacuated Terezln (or Theresienstadt, as it was called in German) and transformed the ancient walled city into a huge transit camp. Terezln provided a convenient holding pen for the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia until they could be shipped to the East, where the death camps in Poland were running at full capacity. More than one hundred thousand Jews were sent to Terezln. The Nazis allowed the inmates, many ofwhom were prominent writers, scholars, and musicians, to organize cultural activities and produce concerts. In 1941, Haas was deported to Terezfn. On November 30, 1942, he composedAl Sefod (Do Not Mourn), a choral work for male voices, which he dedicated to Otto Zucker, Deputy Chairman of the Terezfn Council, a prisoners' group. The work's optimistic text, a new poem by the Palestinian Jew Yaacov Shimoni, is a vigorous exhortation to the people to free themselves from the lethargy of Diaspora by working and reclaiming the land of Israel.