Serenade for Erika Rybeck 

Erika's younger son, Alex Rybeck, is a well-known music director and song composer who works in musicals and cabaret.  For his mother's 80th birthday he composed, Serenade for Erika Rybeck.   

"a moving tribute to my parents... which always brings tears to my eyes."

The Skye Boat Song

One of Erika's favourite songs was The Skye Boat Song.  Look at the lyrics.  Why do you think Erika identified so strongly with the song?

Here are two recordings from The Scots Language Centre.

In Australia, Ruth McCall has written a new version of the song, Skye Boat Song Lament as a protest of the Australian government's treatment of present day refugees.  

The Sound of Music

Erika loved the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music.  This undoubtedly reminded Erika of her wonderful childhood in Austria and also of her escape to freedom from the Nazis.  

Verdi's Requiem

During the war, in the ghetto camp of Terezin in Czechoslovakia, a chorus of Jewish prisoners gave musical concerts for their fellow inmates.  One of the pieces they performed was Verdi's Requiem which they learnt to sing in its original Latin.   This mass for the dead speaks about the final judgement that all men must face.  This was deeply symbolic as it gave the prisoners the chance to speak out in an act of defiance against their Nazi oppressors which they otherwise could not do.  

Erika lost members of her extended family in Terezin and attended a performance of the Defiant Requiem at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. in 2011.  She was incredibly moved and afterward told her cousin Bob, Mia's son, about it.  

"He responded with the surprising news that Conductor Murry Sidlin whom we had just heard would re-create the Defiant Requiem in Bemidji, his (Bob's) Minnesota hometown.  Equally surprising and even more heartwarming, Bob had arranged for the program to be dedicated to the memory of my parents, other relatives of Bob's and mine, and to all others who had perished in the Holocaust...

Somewhere in a Polish forest lie the remains of my mother and father.  They were murdered by the Nazis at Chelmno as part of Germany's "final solution." No grave, tombstone or acknowledgement offers proof that they had existed - a truth I lived with for too long.

For the first time since their horrible deaths in 1942, hidden in mystery until 2002, I finally felt free to grieve for them as their lives were  validated during a most moving performance of the Defiant Requiem.  It was Sunday, May 1, 2011 in Bemidji, Minnesota...

What an honor it was for my parents to be remembered at long last in such a fitting fashion."

You can find out more about Verdi's Requiem at Terezin and register to access teaching resources at Defiant Requiem Education.