Ruth Kristina Tremel

Words can barely express the sorrow of yet another victim of the madness that defiled Central Europe in the mid-century: the daughter of the composer Hans Winterberg about whom you can read here: http://forbiddenmusic.org/…/the-ominous-case-of-the-hans-w…/

A woman whose parents were forced into divorce by the Nazis – her father imprisoned in Theresienstadt – her own life led in orphanages and borstals; the entire family expelled from their home in Prague, her father remaining imprisoned in Theresienstadt for a further two years until he could make his way to Germany, having – like nearly all German speaking Czechs - lost his Czech citizenship. Ruth eventually found temporary happiness in marriage and the birth of a son only to abandon both husband and child with no further contact to her son Peter until her final days. It was a life led in fear and victim of wave after violent wave. Thanks to Christophe Sirodeau for this performance of Winterberg’s work, composed for Ruth's baptism in 1939(!). (Benjamin Michael Haas)