While imprisoned in Dachau in 1938, Herbert Zipper spent 12 mind-numbing hours a day pushing a cart loaded with heavy stones. To buoy his spirits and those of other inmates, the Viennese intellectual composed a militant anti-Nazi anthem and secretly conducted a small orchestra in an unused latrine.
Even amid the soul-depleting humiliation and misery of the notorious German concentration camp, he realized that music could bring life-affirming joy.
After surviving Dachau and then Buchenwald, Zipper dedicated his life to the arts, teaching at USC and the New School for Social Research in New York and creating symphonic music programs for younger students in rural and inner-city schools. Practically until his death 10 years ago at age 92, he was mentoring students in China and teaching composition and music theory at the private Crossroads School in Santa Monica.
"We have to see the world as it is, but we have to think about what the world could be," Zipper told a Times reporter shortly before he died. "That's what the arts are about."
On Sunday afternoon Crossroads will honor the impassioned teacher whom students called "Papa Z" when it unveils the Herbert Zipper Archive, a remarkable compilation of books, hand-penned music scores, recordings, photographs and letters, including one that Zipper wrote in German to his friend Eric Simon on Buchenwald \o7Konzentrationslager\f7 letterhead. The collection -- which also features material about Zipper's wife, dancer Trudl Dubsky, who died in 1976 -- was donated to the school after Zipper's death.
The opening of the exhibition, which is titled "Herbert Zipper: Courage Teacher," will feature a live performance of "Dachau Lied" (Dachau Song), for which his friend and fellow prisoner Jura Soyfer wrote the lyrics. Not long after, Soyfer died at Buchenwald. Throughout the war, inmates memorized the song of resistance and passed it from camp to camp.
The original score, neatly handwritten by Zipper sometime later, is in the collection, but with the title "Arbeit Macht Frei." The cruelly cynical words, which translate roughly as "Work will set you free," greeted Jewish prisoners when they arrived at the Dachau entry gate. The song, which can be heard at www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/music/detail.phpcontentdachau, exhorts prisoners:
\o7
Stay humane, Dachau mate,
Be a man, Dachau mate,
And work as hard as you can, Dachau mate,
For work leads to freedom alone!
