Re: [Cz-L] From today's paper

Miriam (Mimi) Taylor <mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu>

Dear Eytan,

We share your sorrow on the loss of your mother and are grateful to you
for telling us of your memories of her. As a fellow Czernowitzer, I know
what your brother describes as your mother feeling that Czernowitz was
"Paradise Lost". "Leise flehen meine Lieder" was a great favorite in
Czernowitz. I remember both the Josef Schmidt record and my mother
singing this Lied. The reason your mother and her friend sang by the open
window in the hope that someone passing by would "discover" them, is that
everyone was familiar with the story of Selma Kurz, the great soprano, who
was discovered by a clergyman who passed by while she was singing as she
cleaned the windows.

I hope you take comfort in that your mother was able to write about her life
and memories.

Mimi (Miriam Reifer Taylor)

> "At the age of 13 or 14, I was close friends with Lola.
> She used to play the piano and I used to sing. As they lived on the second
> floor, the windows were open in the summer, we would ask her older sister
> Erna, who was deaf-mute, to watch at the window every now and then,
> whether anybody stopped in the street to listen to us playing and singing
> the Schubert Serenade: Leise flehen meine Lieder. . . I don't think anybody
> did, yet we tried hard to be heard."
>
>
> Pearl Fichman, (1989 / 2005) Before Memories Fade, p. 41
>
[snip]
Received on 2006-10-11 20:05:43