Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, the Dutch soprano, writer and vocal coach, Judith Mok, will perform her radio memoir, Confinements, on RTE Drama On One on RTÉ Radio 1 this Sunday Jan 24, 2021 - listen to Confinements above.
In the piece, recurring lockdowns prompt echoes from Judith's family history; of precious moments together, of lives lost in the darkest days of World War 2. Below, Judith explains how confinements of past and present overlapped in the writing of the piece.
Possibly it could be a fairytale. I am locked up in a gentle confinement, sitting in my stairwell, waiting for the police to come upstairs. I'm humming a tune, classical of course because I am a classical singer. A singer who writes tales as well. We are living in a pandemic and we have to stay at home with our cats and dog and a sunlit view of the city of Dublin with a large range of mountains not very far off.
I was born in another country, in a Jewish family of survivors.
I feel there is this tale to tell about my parents and how they lived through their confinement in World War II, with death as a perpetual threat at their door.
Even if they have discovered a bomb dating from the War of Independence that needs to be exploded down in the canal by my Dublin place. Even if the police are asking us to leave our dwellings for a couple of hours right now. Even if we have to be careful to keep at a distance from others. I could wear my Venetian Masque designed for another plague. We are not going to be thrown on a truck, a train and finally into a gas chamber if we break this confinement. A policewoman kindly tells me to wrap up for the cold. I do, boots and coat on, dog on a leash, husband and daughter join me and off we go. I have this tale to tell you in my head which I will write down when I am home again.Warm and safe and with all the freedom in the world to tell you the story of different types of confinements. There is time now to think about my parents and their past.
I was born in another country, in a Jewish family of survivors.
Time to connect to some of the music written for me and various brilliant orchestras, on Yiddish texts that I recorded and can now place within the context of my life and theirs, my parents lives, lived in confinements. But I am reflecting on our situation and many more deprived ones like Syrian, Yemenite and African children as well.
Trying to find a laugh in the dark, that needs to be lit up now and then, is a given.
To make this soundtrack of memories in spoken and sung words is what I tried to do.
Trees, sounds and scents of my youth remembered. That visit of Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank to our house and how I perceive Anne so differently now that our fathers were briefly connected by a few letters.
There were absurdly normal situations lived under extreme circumstances by my family during their World War II experiences of being in total hiding, obscured into a minimal existence. There is my father's life as a leading author, a tortured man who lost his entire family, my mother's Russian songs accompanied by a Balalaika, that still sing in me in this Dublin life, my life…
Judith Mok will perform her radio memoir, Confinements, on RTÉ Drama On One on RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday Jan 24th - listen back here.
