In 1943, the conductor Raphael Schachter, an inmate at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, mounted a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem with 150 of his fellow prisoners serving as the chorus. An orchestral performance of the same piece, combined with narration and video and entitled “Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin” has just finished a tour of the U.S. as one of many recent efforts to recreate music produced or performed by Jews during the Holocaust. Matt Lebovic writes of the original Theresienstadt concert:

From synagogue shootings, to attacks on Jews on the streets, to the gathering strength and viciousness of anti-Zionism, especially in the corridors of political power, American Jewry has ample reason for concern about its safety and wellbeing. But, surveying both the present situation and the deep roots of what has made America a welcoming home to Jews with “no analogue in the 2,000 years after the destruction of the Temple,” Josef Joffe argues that the U.S. remains exceptional. The bad news, however, is still bad: