ISTANBUL — "A Memorial Concert for the Holocaust: Four Composers, Three Life-Affirming Stories” was an event sponsored by the municipal government shortly before Holocaust Remembrance Day. This Turkish city is hardly the place where such an event would be expected to be held, and certainly not outside the limited confines of the local Jewish community. It likely would not be held in normal times, certainly not on the eve of Israel’s official Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, and doesn't seem a likely candidate for an event now, when the world is marking the centennial of World War I. After all, Turkey is still waging a battle of its own against even the slightest hint of recognition that the massacre of Armenians living within the crumbling Ottoman Empire was a planned and coordinated act of genocide. Simply consider what happened April 12, when Ankara responded with outrage to the statement of Pope Francis that the massacre of the Armenians was the first act of genocide in the 20th century.

Turkish-Jewish musician and musical researcher Renan Koen enlisted the help of German musical researcher Gottfried Wagner, and together they produced an audiovisual performance that focused on the lives of four Jewish composers: Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, Viktor Ullmann and Zikmund Schul, all of whom continued to write music in the hell that was the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II. It is also worth noting that Gottfried Wagner is the great-grandson of composer Richard Wagner, whose works are generally boycotted in Israel because of his anti-Semitic writings and the fact that he was so admired by the Nazis.

The event was advertised extensively, but most of the audience consisted of invited guests, including diplomats serving in the foreign consulates in Istanbul, former staff members of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, academics and members of the Jewish community. I had the pleasure of attending the event as a guest of the Israeli consul general in Istanbul. The performance took place in two languages, Turkish and English. Hayri Inonu, mayor of the municipality of Sisli, one of 39 districts that make up the vast metropolis of Istanbul, sponsored the event. In his opening remarks, he commented on the remarkable ability of those musicians to continue writing music even after they were ripped from their homes, forced to subsist in subhuman conditions and lived knowing that their days were numbered and that death lurked around every corner.

The mayor, who is a member of Turkey’s leading opposition party, told Al-Monitor this was the first time that such an event took place in Istanbul. Inonu emphasized that the concert was funded by the “The Quincentennial Foundation,” whose goal he described as highlighting the deep relationship between the Jewish people and Turkey, which began when the Ottomans welcomed Jewish refugees expelled from Spain at the time of the Inquisition.