The Grey Zone: Stories, Performance, and Candle lighting in honor of Yom HaShoah

Tickets are required. Seating is limited and registration is on a first-come, first-served basis.*

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Join us for a moving community commemoration of Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day, focusing on the concept of the “grey zone” developed by Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi. Levi explored the morally complex relationships between Nazis and prisoners in Auschwitz, noting that life in the camps could not be reduced simply to victims and persecutors. In the gray zone, oppressors often compelled prisoners to become unwilling accomplices.

Drawing from his book Our Will to Live, Terezín Music Foundation Director Mark Ludwig will share stories of how music by Jewish composers—and other artistic expression in the Terezín concentration camp—was co-opted for Nazi propaganda. Through staged performances, a propaganda film, and a Red Cross inspection, creativity and culture were transformed into instruments of deception, illustrating the chilling moral complexities of the gray zone.

The program features Mark Ludwig and members of the Terezín Music Foundation Ensemble: Greg Vitale (violin), Jesse Holstein (viola), and Jing Li (cello). It will conclude with a memorial candle lighting, prayers, and a moment of silence in memory of those murdered in the Holocaust.

Co-sponsored by the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires and the Tanglewood Learning Institute.

If you are unable to attend, please notify us so your seat can be made available to other community members.