Photo: Justyna
Saul Dreier grew up in a musical family in Krakow, Poland, but learned to play the drums in a concentration camp during the Holocaust by banging two soup spoons together to create a beat for an informal choir that chanted traditional Jewish songs each night. But living in the US since 1949, he didn’t play drums again until 2014, when he wanted to honor Alice Herz-Sommer, a concert pianist thought to be the oldest known Holocaust survivor, who died at 110. At 88, he bought new drums and gathered an accordionist, violinist, guitarist, saxophonist and trumpet player — who had survived the Holocaust or were children of survivors — to form The Holocaust Survivor Band and play Jewish folk songs known as klezmer music. In the decade since, they have performed nearly 100 concerts across the US, Israel, Germany, Brazil and Poland, were featured in a 2020 documentary, and recently played at the White House Hanukkah party.
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