Miklós Vig

Miklós Vig was a Hungarian cabaret and jazz singer, actor, comedian and theater secretary in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Born in Budapest on July 11, 1898, he was murdered there on December 19, 1944 by members of the Arrow Cross.

He was born Miklós Voglhut in 1898 to a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. Although he went to acting school, he had better success as a cabaret singer.

In 1924 as his career was picking up he changed his surname to Vig. He changed his name because Voglhut was a Jewish-sounding name and antisemitism was growing at the time. Vig means cheerful or merry; it is a nice, short, typically Hungarian name that also made a great stage name.

The fact that he was married to a Catholic woman, Kati Szőke, and the fact that he changed his name did not save him from the Holocaust. On December 19, 1944, Miklós was among a group of Jews who were bound, lined up along the banks of the Danube and machine-gunned into the river by Hungarian Nazis, members of the Arrow Cross Party. The Shoes on the Danube Promenade honors the memory of those who were murdered in this fashion.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikl%C3%B3s_Vig

Joseph Schmidt

Joseph Schmidt (March 4, 1904 – November 16, 1942) was a German Jew who was a tenor and actor.

He was born in Davideny (Ukrainian: Davydivka), a small town in the Bukovina province of Austria-Hungary, later Romania and now part of Ukraine.

As a child of musical parents, young Joseph was influenced by many cultures. In addition to German, which was his first language ^[1], and Yiddish, he learned Hebrew and became fluent in Romanian, French and English. His first vocal training was as an alto boy in the Czernowitz Synagogue. His talents were quickly recognised and by 1924 he was featured in his first solo recital in Czernowitz singing traditional Jewish songs and arias by Verdi, Puccini, Rossini and Bizet. Soon he moved to Berlin and took piano and singing lessons from Professor Hermann Weissenborn. He returned to Romania for his military service and became cantor of the Czernowitz synagogue.

In 1929 he went back to Berlin, where Cornelis Bronsgeest, a famous Dutch baritone, engaged him for a radio broadcast as Vasco da Gama in Meyerbeer's L'Africaine. This was the beginning of a successful international career. Owing to his diminutive stature (he was just over 1.5 m) a stage career was impossible; however his voice was extremely well suited for radio. He made many records, first for Ultraphone, then for Odeon/Parlophone, was featured in many radio broadcasts and acted in several movies in both German and English.

Ironically, Joseph Schmidt enjoyed his greatest successes during the rise of the German Nazis, who subsequently prohibited Jewish artists and writers from working. In 1937, he toured the United States and performed in Carnegie Hall together with other prominent singers such as Grace Moore. The Nazis banned him from performing in Germany and Austria, but he was still very much welcome in the Netherlands and Belgium, where he was immensely popular.

In 1939, he visited his mother in Czernowitz for the last time. When the war broke out that year he was caught in France by the German invasion. He attempted to escape to the United States but, unfortunately, this failed. Making a dash for the Swiss border, he was interned in a Swiss refugee camp in Gyrenbad near Zürich in October 1942. He had been already in frail health. Harsh camp life and lack of medical care brought about a fatal heart attack on November 16, 1942. He was only 38 years old.

He had a sweet lyric tenor voice with an easy high register, sailing up even to a high D. His warm timbre was perfectly suited for the melodies of Schubert and Lehár. His popular song recordings were the best-sellers of that age.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schmidt

Kurt Gerron

Kurt Gerron (May 11, 1897 – November 15, 1944) was a German Jewish actor and film director.

Born Kurt Gerson into a well-off merchant family in Berlin, he initially studied medicine but was called up for military service in World War I. Seriously wounded he qualified as a military doctor of the German Army. After the war Gerron turned to a stage career and became a theatre actor under director Max Reinhardt in 1920.

He appeared in secondary roles in several silent films and from 1926 also directed film shots. He had his breakthrough starring in such films as The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel) opposite Marlene Dietrich, while on stage he originated the role of "Tiger" Brown in the premiere production of The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) at the Berlin Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in 1928, also singing Mack the Knife.

After the Machtergreifung in 1933 Gerron left Nazi Germany with his wife and parents, traveling first to Paris and later to Amsterdam. There, he kept on working as an actor at the Stadsschouwburg and director in several movies. He was offered employments in Hollywood by the agency of Peter Lorre and Josef von Sternberg, but refused several times, one time because his potential employer didn't offer first class tickets, and stayed behind in Europe. After the Wehrmacht had occupied the Netherlands, he was interned in the transit camp at Westerbork before being sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. There he ran a cabaret called Karussell to entertain the inmates.

In 1944, Gerron was either persuaded or coerced by the Nazis to make a propaganda film showing how humane the conditions were at Theresienstadt. After shooting finished, Gerron and the members of Jazz pianist Martin Roman's Ghetto Swingers were deported on the camp's final transport to Auschwitz. Gerron was killed immediately upon arrival, Roman and guitarist Coco Schumann survived. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the gas chambers to be closed forever the next day. Gerron's film, supposed to have been titled either Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement) also known as Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Führer Gives the Jews a City), was supposedly never completed and exists today only in fragmentary form.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Gerron