At the Crossroads: Music, Memory, and Transference in the Context of Catholic Victims of the Holocaust

• In Event: The Transfer and Reconfiguration of Memory through Music

Abstract

On March 5, 2000, eighty-six girls from Nazareth Academy High School in Philadelphia, PA, stood on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to sing for the beatification of eleven Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth (CSFN) from Nowogrodek, Poland, who were murdered by the Nazis in August, 1943. In this paper, I use my experience as one of these girls to analyze what being at the crossroads of music and memory looks like in light of the responsibility to transfer these memories and stories to an international audience. Ultimately, my goal is to examine what musical memory transference looks like, and how it is represented, when the full understanding of those memories is not present or when one is too young to understand the entire context of the story they are representing.

Author

• Karen Lin Uslin, Stockton U / Defiant Requiem Foundation