Mar 3, 2008 3:04 pm US/Central
MN Students To Perform At Nazi Concentration Camp
ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) ―
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Students and faculty from St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict will join St. Cloud State in performing "To Be Certain of the Dawn."
AP
A delegation of college students and faculty from the area plans to perform a Holocaust oratorio at a Nazi concentration camp this summer.
The trip to Natzweiler in France, which is being led by St. Cloud State University professor Joseph Edelheit, comes as the campus deals with a series of incidents in which swastikas have appeared.
"Here we are, a campus that is unfairly noted for swastikas. And we're taking a choir and a symphony orchestra and we're going to a concentration camp," Edelheit said. "What does that say? Does that say this campus is insensitive, that somehow we're disconnected to the issues of that sign, that symbol? No. I think we're connected at a cosmic level."
Edelheit, a rabbi, said hearing musicians sing and play instruments at the concentration camp will be a special moment.
"I will feel that I'm in a sacred place," he said.
Students and faculty from St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict will join St. Cloud State in performing "To Be Certain of the Dawn." The oratorio was composed by Stephen Paulus with a libretto from poet Michael Dennis Browne. It was commissioned by the Rev. Michael O'Connell, rector of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis as a gift to the Jewish people, Edelheit said.
The oratorio will be performed April 25 in Ritsche Auditorium at St. Cloud State University before the musicians travel to Europe.
"We're playing it for the first time ever in the world on this campus. I think that is a big statement that has to get more ink than the number of swastikas we've had on campus," Edelheit said.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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