News & Events 2002-2003

Martin Goldsmith on How Music Saved His Parents’ Lives

Martin Goldsmith, author of The Inextinguishable Symphony, spoke to a full crowd as part of the Society of Skeptics lecture series on January 14th in Armstrong-Hipkins Center for the Arts.

A National Public Radio Senior Commentator, Martin Goldsmith says he owes his life to an orchestra that disappeared long before he was born. During the 1930s in Germany the Jüdische Kulturbund orchestra, staffed entirely by Jewish musicians, was used as a Nazi propaganda weapon. Goldsmith tells the story of the Kulturbund in his book The Inextinguishable Symphony.

The Jüdische Kulturbund was formed in 1933 by Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda after more than 8,000 Jewish musicians and actors were expelled from German orchestras, opera companies and theater groups, and were banned from attending Aryan theaters. The Kulturbund allowed Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences and was used by the Nazis as a propaganda tool to show the world how well Jews were supposedly being treated under the Third Reich. In 1941, Germany’s preoccupation with the war and the “Final Solution” rendered the Kulturbund unnecessary and it was dissolved and its members were shipped to concentration camps. Goldsmith’s parents, Gunther Goldschmidt, a flutist, and Rosemarie Gumpert, a violist, met and fell in love while performing in the Kulturbund orchestra. While most of Goldsmith’s relatives died in Hitler’s death camps, his parents escaped to America, where Rosemarie performed with the St. Louis Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra.

Born in the St. Louis, Goldsmith began his radio career in 1971 as a producer and announcer at WCVL in Cleveland. In the mid-1970s he joined WETA-FM in Washington, D.C., where he served as a music and program director. Goldsmith was the music producer for NPR’s “Performance Today” for two years before hosting the program from 1989 to 1999. He assumed the role of senior commentator in 1999 in order to complete The Inextinguishable Symphony. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Goldsmith plays the French horn and has sung in the chorus of the Baltimore Opera Company and made a guest appearance with the Washington Opera.

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