a living story of gypsy...
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Family’s Holocaust experiences strike lasting chord with guitarist Lulo Reinhardt
A Living Story of
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Gypsy SurvivalBy Marc Shapiro
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Reinhardt, the great-nephewof gypsy jazz guitar legendDjango Reinhardt, plays Satur-day at the Gordon Center forPerforming Arts at the OwingsMills JCC as part of InternationalGuitar Night.
He lost hundreds of cousinshe never met to the Holocaust,in which up to 220,000 gypsieswere killed, according to theUnited States Holocaust Memo-rial Museum. But his grandpar-ents and his father as well as hisfather’s siblings, with the excep-tion of one brother, survived.
“It’s just a miracle,” Reinhardt,54, said.
e guitarist brings his diverse sound, which draws ongypsy, flamenco, Latin andBrazilian influences, to the Owings Mills venue along withInternational Guitar Night tourfounder Brian Gore, contem-porary fingerstyle player MikeDawes and multi-genre guitaristAndre Krengel.
“I love his style. I’m definitelya fan,” SONiA Rutstein of Dis-appear Fear said of Reinhardt.e Grammy Award-winningBaltimore native singer-song-writer brought him to Balti-more to play on an album sheproduced by young violinistSam Weiser in 2010. She heard
some gypsy sounds in Weiser’splaying and thought Reinhardtcould complement the music.She also performed with him atMusikmesse, a music merchan-dising convention in Germany,and will be performing at hisclub in Koblenz, Germany thisApril.
“[His style is] a combinationof, of course, the Django, thejazz, with also a touch of theflamenco style. He’s lightningfast with the movement, but it’s
very tasteful, and he’s not aspeed demon,” she said. “He’shysterical actually. He’s very determined, he’s a perfectionistand a little crazy, as most extraordinary musicians are.”
Born in 1961, Reinhardtlearned the music of his familyfrom a young age, and he also
learned its Holocaust stories,which echo the struggles andjourneys of Jews during thattime period.
Toward the end of the 1930s,a doctor came to the “gypsyghetto” where about 50 familieslived, bearing gis in an effortto attract participants to submitto blood tests and other physi-cal measurements and conductinterviews about where theycame from since gypsies werenot native to Germany. Rein-
hardt said that although thegypsies had problems in Ger-many much like the Jews, theytrusted the doctor. But a fewyears later in 1942, when Rein-hardt’s father, Bawo, was just 18 months old, the gypsieswere moved from the ghetto tothe city of Koblenz in western
Germany, which was used as a collection point. From there,the gypsies were put on trainsdestined for Buchenwald.
At the time, Reinhardt’sgrandfather, Joseph, who was aviolinist, actually worked forthe German army in a secretarialposition.
“Many gypsies were fightingfor the German army, alsomany Jewish [people],” Rein-hardt said. “At this time it was agood job. It was a good paying
job, even if you [did] an officejob.”
Arriving home aer workone day, Reinhardt’s grandfatherwas surprised by what he found.
“He came home from hiswork and the ghetto was empty.No one was there anymore. Hewas shocked. It was like a ghost
It’s truly miraculousIt’s truly miraculous that Lulo Reinhardt is here to tell his family’s story and carryon its musical traditions. e Reinhardts — gypsies from India who settled inGermany 600 years ago — survived Buchenwald, Auschwitz and death marches.Some were inside, and moments from entering, the gas chambers when Auschwitzwas liberated.
“You imagine he had this German uniform and he was knocking on the door at Buchenwald ...
my grandfather said, ‘Let me in, my family is here,’and the soldier said, ‘You better go.’ My grandfathertook off his uniform and said, ‘Let me in, I’m a gypsyand my family is here.’ ... They gave him a tattoo.”
— Lulo Reinhardt
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38 Baltimore Jewish Times March 4, 2016
street,” Reinhardt said. “Hewent to back to work and hewas asking his colleagues andsaid, ‘Where’s my family?’”
His co-workers couldn’t an-swer and suggested he ask thepolice, who at that point were SS officers. He eventually foundout that the gypsies were de-ported to the concentrationcamp.
As the story goes, Josephrode his horse to a city nearBuchenwald, but the horse diedalong the way. It took him twoweeks to reach the camp.
“You imagine he had this Ger-man uniform and he was knock-ing on the door at Buchenwald.e German soldier there said,
‘What do you want here?’ andso my grandfather said, ‘Let mein, my family is here,’ and thesoldier said, ‘You better go,’”Reinhardt said. “My grandfa-ther took off his uniform andsaid, ‘Let me in, I’m a gypsy andmy family is here.’ … ey gavehim a tattoo.”
But the gypsies had beensent off by then. Some familymembers went to Ravensbruck,the camp for women and youngchildren, and others to Bergen-Belsen and Mauthausen-Gusenbefore they all wound up atAuschwitz.
Reinhardt said his father wasin line for the gas chamber atAuschwitz when Soviet troops
arrived in January 1945. One ofhis brothers was inside, andsurvived, although there mayhave been some brain damage.Aer being liberated, the family went back to Koblenz,where Lulo was born in 1961.
His legendary great-uncle,Django, narrowly avoided con-centration camps. During thewar, Django was popularenough that he actually enter-tained the Nazis in Paris in underground clubs.
“ere were many jazz aficionados among the Nazi occupiers, so they put togetherjazz clubs and jazz concerts,”said Bret Werb, music andsound collection curator at the
United States Holocaust Memo-rial Museum. “Django was prettywell protected. Eventually, hele Paris and survived in thecountryside.”
e family story is thatDjango encountered some Nazitroops when he was leavingParis and was arrested. Whilesome officers wanted to sendhim to a concentration camp,one soldier who was a fan convinced the others to letDjango go.
Lulo Reinhardt visited all thecamps where his family washeld prisoner and the barrackswhere gypsies were held. Heand his fellow InternationalGuitar Night performers played
SONiA Rutstein, a Grammy Award-winning Baltimore native, performs with Lulo Reinhardt at Musikmesse, a music merchandising conventionin Germany.
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in the library at Auschwitz lastyear. On one of his albums,Reinhardt recorded a suite ofsongs called “Memories ofDachau,” dedicated to hisuncle, also named Lulo, whowas held at the camp.
Music wasn’t completely ab-sent from the Reinhardt family,or the gypsy people, duringWorld War II, similar to the experience of Jewish musiciansduring the Holocaust.
“My father’s oldest brother,he was 12 or 13. He was playingevery single day,” Reinhardt
said. “Even sometimes theNazis said, ‘Come out andplay,’” and he would play, some-times barefoot and scantily cladin subzero temperatures.
“I asked my uncle, ‘How canyou play in this cold weather?’And he said, ‘You just play,’”Reinhardt said. “He was soscared.”
Werb said each concentra-tion camp had its own culture,and so it’s hard to generalizehow music worked in thecamps. In the ghettos, somepeople brought instruments,
but sometimes they’d get lostalong the way, burned for fuelor traded for food. In the con-centration camps, the instru-ments could have arrived withpeople or could have been con-fiscated from other prisoners.
“ere’s definite documenta-tion that there were gypsy ensembles, and there weregroups called gypsy orchestrasthat may have included gypsiesand non-gypsies,” Werb said.
Rutstein, a Pikesville HighSchool graduate and memberof Congregation Beit Tikvah,
said the Reinhardt family’s experiences speak volumesabout their character and theirmusic.
“e Reinhardt family, Ithink, is a strong breed. atthey survived really says a lot inmind and body and spirit,” shesaid. “I think that’s indicative ofgypsy music as well … it’sgoing to seek the strongest pathgoing forward.”
Having toured the world, in-cluding Israel six times, Rutsteincan speak to the universality ofgypsy music and noted that theSO
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Above:ViewofthemainentrancetotheBuchenwaldconcentrationcamp,wheremembersofLuloReinhardt’sfamilywereheld.
Topright:ViewoftheentrancetothegypsycamponBrzezinskaStreetintheLodzghettoafteritsliquidation.
Right:MembersofaFrench-Hungariangypsyband(possiblyrelatedtoDjangoReinhardt)poseforaphotographwiththeirinstruments.Fromleft:GabrielReinhardt,BenjaminReinhardt,JohanReinhardt,anunknownmusician,BenReinhardt,JosefReinhardtandanotherunknownmusician.ThegroupwasbannedandallitsmembersweresterilizedinWuerburg.
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40 Baltimore Jewish Times March 4, 2016
music has found popularity inBaltimore, with last weekend’ssold-out Charm City DjangoJazz Fest at the Creative Alliance.
“It sort of takes you back sev-eral decades, but [the music is]still quite vibrant now. It’s fun.It can really be a nice palette forexcellent playing; you really canshowcase your playing to amagnificent extent because,kind of like bluegrass does, youtake a lead and you just go withit,” she said. “It’s sort of like European bluegrass in a way,somewhere in between klezmerand polka. It’s very in the moment, and yet the melodiesare powerful and indelible.”
Reinhardt’s Musical Evolutionrough survival, the family’srich musical traditions live on.
“I started with Django’s musicwhen I was 5,” Reinhardt said.“My father was teaching meguitar for the first two years,from age 5 until 7. He showed
me all the main, basic chordsand everything on guitar.”
His father, Bawo, introducedhim to French music, Brazilianguitar and Frank Sinatra’smusic as well — his father’seclectic musical tastes rubbedoff on him.
At age 7, Reinhardt startedplaying with his cousin andnext-door neighbor, MikeReinhardt, who taught himthe rhythm guitar parts ofDjango’s music. ey’d playfive, sometimes 10 hours a day.At age 12, he joined Mike’s band.
“Aer Django died [in 1953],there was nothing between ’53and ’63 because no one wantedto play guitar anymore becausethey had so much respect forDjango,” Reinhardt said.
He played in Mike’s band,which became quite popular
Female survivors are pictured in the “gypsy barracks”after liberation at Bergen-Belsen, a camp in whichmembers of Lulo Reinhardt’s family were held.
A group of gypsy prisoners, awaiting instructions from their German captors, sit in an open area near thefence in the Belzec concentration camp.
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because of this lull in gypsymusic, for 25 years.
In 1992, Reinhardt and hisfather started a band called IGitanos that played Latin musicwith lyrics sung in the Romanigypsy language. In his down-time, he started the Lulo Rein-hardt Project, which evolvedinto the Lulo Reinhardt LatinSwing Project in 2008. Hisnamesake projects feature hisdiverse musical interests, fromsamba to flamenco to rumba tojazz to Latin swing.
When Reinhardt’s father diedin 2013, he wrote a song called“e Fighter,” which he per-formed at the funeral. Weekslater, he and the Latin SwingProject recorded an album,“Bawo,” dedicated to his father.e band recorded the entirealbum in two days. “Best CD Iever made,” Reinhardt said.
While the horrors Bawo andthe Reinhardt family enduredduring the Holocaust are behindthem, anti-gypsy sentiment stilllives on.
“We are confronted with thisevery single day, the gypsies,”he said. “ey kill gypsies still,neo-Nazis.”
Despite a complicated his-tory and present-day anti-gypsysentiment, Reinhardt remains a proud ambassador of his heritage. Next year, he plans toundergo his third film project,in which he will retrace thejourney his ancestors took fromIndia to Germany and connectand play with gypsy musiciansalong the way. He also plans totell the story of his musicaljourney and that of his family ina book he’s writing called “eWay to Latin Swing.”
As for Saturday’s show at theGordon Center, Reinhardt saidit’s the best tour he’s ever done.
“As a guitar player, you canlearn so much from other gui-tar players,” he said. “We havefour different styles, four differ-ent guitar players, four differentcharacters. at makes thisshow so special.”
Gore, the tour’s founder, saidReinhardt is deeply committedto his cra.
“Lulo believes that develop-ing his own style is the best wayto honor Django, rather thanrepeating his playing note fornote, over and over again,” hesaid. “Django was an innovatoraer all; and so it should be forLulo, who has been living andbreathing Django since he wasa toddler.”
Randi Benesch, managingdirector of the Gordon Center,said when she came to theGordon Center three-and-a-half years ago, she didn’t knowwhat to expect from Interna-tional Guitar Night, which isan annual staple at the venue.
“I was really overwhelmedand amazed by the talent anddiversity of the guitarists thatBrian [Gore] puts togethereach year. e Gordon is suchan intimate space and theacoustics are so incredible thatit’s the perfect program for theGordon,” she said. “ese arealways true guitar masters, andthey really represent the greatversatility that the guitar canprovide. It always amazes andwows me how each player hastheir own unique style andtechnique.” JT
International Guitar Nightplays the Gordon Center on Sat-urday, March 5 at 8 p.m. Ticketsare $28 in advance and $35 atthe door. Visit jcc.org/event/international-guitar-night formore information.
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