Episode 8: Westphalia (Opus 53, No. 1)
6m
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Mendelssohn on the Hudson
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Southwest corner of Cabrini Boulevard & 190th St. outside 900 West 190th
We’re at the southwest corner of Cabrini Boulevard & 190th, in front of 900 West 190th, or Cabrini Terrace. It’s the neighborhood’s tallest and - built in the mid-1950s - one of its newest structures. Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital of Hungary, which was on the northwest corner, served the uptown population until 1981. If you're curious, here'sthe Revolutionary War Muralof Washington Heights, NYC.
Ursula, who lived on this corner, was in a forced-labor camp at Kassel Bettenhausen when she was a teen. Music saved her life during the nine months she was there, right before the Allies liberated the camp in 1945. Decades later, Ursula shares her story with anyone who’d like to hear it, and she still bursts into song.
The episode Episode 8: Westphalia (Opus 53, No. 1) from the podcast Mendelssohn on the Hudson has a duration of
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More episodes from Mendelssohn on the Hudson
Prologue: Welcome to Mendelssohn on the Hudson
181st & Fort Washington Ave, Northeast Corner near Fort Washington Collegiate Church
What would you do if your country forced you out, to leave behind everything you loved? Where would you go?
"Mendelssohn on the Hudson" is a historical musical walking tour about the refugees from Nazi Germany, who fled fascism, persecution, and violence in Europe to create new lives in Washington Heights - and transformed a neighborhood.
Our tour takes you on a journey through the past by walking through the present. You can go at your own pace. You'll hear more about composer, artist, and conductor Felix Mendelssohn, as well as ten true stories set to his music, taken from oral histories of local residents who lived in "Frankfurt on the Hudson." Plus, you’ll discover other local history, geography, and architecture unique to Northern Manhattan.
Episode 1: Rose and Eddie (Opus 30, No. 3)
183rd St. and Fort Washington Ave, Southwest Corner
Notice the pre-warArt Decodesign of this six-story apartment building at 495 Fort Washington Ave. Throughout the 1930s and corresponding with the arrival of the German Jewish refugees, prominent architects designed buildings like this one to accommodate the area’s growing population.
In 1933, the first year of theiranti-Jewish decrees, the Nazis banned Mendelssohn’s music and that of all Jewish-born German composers, toppled Mendelssohn’s statues and destroyed all his other legacies to erase any traces of his existence.
Here, in their adopted country, the German Jews kept Mendelssohn alive. His short piano solos,Songs without Words, orLieder ohne Worte, were wildly popular; copies of this sheet music were ubiquitous on American German Jewish pianos.
Mendelssohn was present in this building when Eddie, a telephone repairman, realized that Rose, an indigent German Jewish woman, couldn’t pay for her phone repair.
Episode 2: Bracelet (Opus 62, No. 2)
Western entrance to Bennett Park, east of Pinehurst Avenue between 183rd and 185th Street
We are at Bennett Park, which was the site of Fort Washington during the Revolutionary War. A plaque on that large rock outcropping also marks the highest point in Manhattan. If you look west on Pinehurst Avenue, you’ll see Hudson View Gardens. Completed in 1925, this lovely Tudor-style complex is on the National Register of Historic Places. For decades, Jews and other minority groups were discouraged from buying homes here.
On November 9, 1938, in Germany, antisemitism reached a new height on what would become known as Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass” - as the Gestapo smashed German Jewish-owned store windows, burned centuries-old synagogues, and arrested Jewish men.
One afternoon, while sitting here in Bennett Park, a neighbor shared her memories of that world-shattering night.
Episode 3: Son of Trujillo (Opus 62, No. 4)
East side of Bennett Park near the steps to Fort Washington Avenue at 184th Street
We see the Art Deco A-train subway entrance designed by Squire J. Vickersacross the street. Our Austrian neighbor Rivke, whose story this episode follows, lived on Bennett Avenue near this subway entrance’s lower level.
It is also within this episode that the neighborhood’s German Jewish and Dominican immigrant stories intersect. After Kristallnacht, most Jews in Nazi-occupied countries tried to leave for any place that would take them, any way they could. The Dominican Republic, under President-Dictator Rafael Trujillo, was the only country that initially proposed to allow an unlimited number of Jews to emigrate there. The son of Trujillo made a promise to Rivke’s husband that will surprise you.
Episode 4: Lillian (Opus 85, No. 6)
Northwest corner of 185th St. at 551 Fort Washington Avenue
We are outside the current home of the Hebrew Tabernacle of Washington Heights congregation. It owns a copy of the Gedenkbuch, the Book of Remembrance, which memorializes the 150,000 Jews lost within German borders between 1933 and 1945. For the religious, synagogues remained an important part of their lives here.
Lillian, a member of this congregation, tells a story illustrating the close calls that made the difference between emigrating and not being able to leave Europe at all.