Harley Gaber – Three Musical Chapters

In Observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day

January 22, 2022 | 2pm (PT) | $10 OJMCHE members, $15 general public

Please join us for a concert generously funded by the Herbert and Ella Ostroff Endowment Fund. 45th Parallel and the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education present a special one-hour concert celebrating the musical genius of Harley Gaber. John Coltrane, Kurt Weill, and Gaber’s own minimalist classic “The Winds Rise in the North”, form the three chapters of this special performance, with accompanying visuals from Gaber’s monumental work DIE PLAGE, currently on view at OJMCHE. 

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which takes place on January 27, marks 78 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. At this time, we remember the atrocities of the Second World War, honor survivors, and challenge ourselves to use the lessons of their experience to inform our lives today.

We are grateful to have received a bequest from Ella Ostroff that provides the opportunity for this program. Ella and her husband Herbert understood the importance of ongoing education about the Holocaust. Ella was a Hungarian survivor, who, along with her mother, two sisters, and her brother, were deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Ella’s mother and brother were murdered in the gas chambers upon arrival. Ella and two of her sisters survived for nearly a year shuffling between Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Dachau. After liberation by American soldiers in 1945, they lived in a displaced person’s camp where they were reunited with their oldest sister. Two years later, Ella and her sisters arrived in the United States. Ella met Herbert in 1948 in upstate New York and they eventually settled in Portland, where they raised their three children. Herbert died in 2003 and Ella in 2020.