The German Martin Friedman grew up in Leipzig in 1895 and ended up in the theater in 1915 after his military service during the First World War. Here he worked as a conductor and composer and therefore sometimes performed in the Netherlands. Due to the advancing fascism in his home country, he decided to flee to Amsterdam in 1935.
Friedmann ended up in a house in Sarphatistraat and later lived in Vijzelstraat and Amstel, among other places. In 1943 he was arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned in Westerbork camp. From there he was deported to the Sobibor extermination camp in April that year, where he was murdered immediately after his arrival on April 9.
Restoring music to its former glory
In consultation with the 4 and 5 May Committee in the capital, trumpeter and composer Gijs Levelt decided to commemorate Friedmann’s music during a silent procession through the city on May 4. Levelt will play a number of the German conductor’s composed pieces on his trumpet in front of his old house on Vijzelstraat. “I felt connected to him,” Levelt says from his music studio in East.
Levelt himself also has a Jewish background and lost many distant relatives during the war. “I am now a few years older than Martin Friedmann was when he died,” he emphasizes. “It’s special how relative it all is and how easily your life can apparently be taken away.”
