THE CELLO STILL SINGS

In this memoir, a cellist explores her immigrant parents’ past as Holocaust survivors.

Growing up in a Jewish family in her birthplace of Toronto, Canada, Janet Horvath was told she was given her first name because it was “intentionally English, not Hungarian, and not Jewish.” Though her parents always welcomed her friends with warm hospitality, they largely kept to themselves and were reluctant to discuss what they endured during World War II. After Janet married, she had a son and moved to the United States to work as a professional cellist like her father. She frequently visited her elderly parents, especially after her mother suffered a stroke, and made a major discovery: In 1948, her dad played in an orchestra of Holocaust survivors in Landsberg, Germany, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Janet began a deep dive into her parents’ journey from their native Hungary, where they met studying music at Budapest’s Liszt Academy; the night before Janet’s father was sent to a Nazi labor camp in 1944, her parents married young so her mother wouldn’t be deported. Meanwhile, Janet reckoned with a mysterious ear injury that threatened to end her relationship with the cello—her father’s legacy. Horvath’s memoir thoroughly explores the complicated aftermath of the Holocaust, when those who survived Nazi occupation and concentration camps were displaced persons, reliant on the kindness of friends, relatives, and strangers—and many, like Janet’s parents, were forced to temporarily relocate to Germany. Horvath’s prose is lyrical (“Consider a time when hell was on earth, when hands accustomed to a musician’s bow, a writer’s pen, a doctor’s scalpel, a painter’s brush, a tailor’s needle, wielded shovelfuls of rocks, limestone, or human remains”) and brutally honest as she explores how trauma leads to complex dynamics; Janet’s father and brother were often estranged, and Janet frequently found herself torn between her life in Minnesota and her parents, who were slowly but surely fading away. In a world in which antisemitism is on the rise, Horvath’s story—equal parts disturbing and inspiring—is necessary and timely reading.

A poetic, nuanced tribute to the power of music and family.