The Horse Adjutant From all over the United States and Mexico, they arrive in Florida for 4-days of intensive rehearsals, performances, and fun. And then we take the show overseas, performing and touring through the United Kingdom, Holland, Denmark, Ger- many, Austria, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. The students learn that music is a gift to be shared, a way to open a dialogue, to touch a soul, to bring joy to a sick or impoverished child. On each trip two experiences always have the most profound impact. The first is when the student performers get to “grant a wish” to a very sick child, on behalf of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Austria. In that moment, each student witnesses first hand how fragile life can be. The second experience comes when we step foot through the gate of a former Nazi concentration and extermination camp [over the years, the tour has visited Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, Theresienstadt, Dachau, and Auschwitz-Birkenau]. Perhaps the number 6 million is difficult to comprehend, but when students have a chance to witness in person the acreage of such concentration and extermination camp operations, walk through the barracks into which people were stacked like cords of wood, can see the gas chambers and the cremation ovens used to expedite the “Final Solution,” they imagine themselves walking in the footsteps of the mil- lions who lost their lives and the fortunate few, like Leon Shagrin, who lived to share their story. Leon Shagrin’s story, as told by Stephen Shooster, touched me so much, because it helped me recognize anew what has been such a motivational force in my life, whether as a student of the saxophone, piano, and drums, as a leader of Make-A- Wish, or as an administrator of fine arts for a world-class company of schools. In order for the next generation to know how to repair our world – Tikkun Olam – we must help them come to terms with our past, and this can only be done well if we are committed to telling the truth, and providing them with the means by which to engage this history first hand. 6,000,000 must stand for something other than a number. It must clearly delineate a period of time, captured so well by Shooster that all people including children must never forget.
Danny Lieberman
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