Performer brings family's Holocaust experience alive

A chance discovery has led to a Canadian composer creating music that honours her family’s experience during the Holocaust.

Lenka Lichtenberg came across about 65 poems her grandmother had written while in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.

"It was really, really very powerful for me to find these because I didn't know my grandmother as a creative artist at all," said Lichtenberg.

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Lichtenberg adapted the poems for Thieves of Dreams, which was awarded a Juno in 2023 for Global Music Album.

Both Lichtenberg's grandmother and mother survived the Holocaust, while her grandfather died in Auschwitz.

Lichtenberg will perform The Secret Poetess of Terezin June 2 at Studio Bell.

• In Pictures: Holocaust violins on display at the National Music Centre

She says musicians will use instruments from Violins of Hope, an exhibit that features violins owned by European Jews before and during the Second World War.