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Remembering Dr. Herbert Zipper #WorldWarTwo survivor

January 18, 2022 by admin Leave a Comment

   

In around 1992 I met an elder­ly gen­tle­man Dr. Her­bert Zip­per, who had been a Jew­ish com­pos­er-con­duc­tor in Ger­many in the 1930s when Hitler was chan­cel­lor. Zip­per was picked up and sent to Dachau where he orga­nized an orches­tra that gave clan­des­tine con­certs from an aban­doned latrine. He was released from Buchen­wald and he went to Mani­la to reunite and mar­ry the love of his life Trudl Dub­sky. Zip­per became the con­duc­tor of the Mani­la Sym­pho­ny Orchestra.
When the Japan­ese invad­ed Mani­la, he was inter­ro­gat­ed and held pris­on­er for five months. Upon his release, he worked for the under­ground. A few weeks after Mani­la’s Lib­er­a­tion he held the famous orches­tra on the ruins of Manila.
I met him in the 1990s because he was look­ing for a pub­lish­er for his wife’s World War Two water­col­or car­i­ca­tures. A big pub­lish­er had accept­ed the work for pub­li­ca­tion in 1964–65 but backed out for what seemed to be polit­i­cal rea­sons. Cross­roads School went on to pub­lish Trudl Dub­sky Zip­per’s book.
I’ve been watch­ing World War Two doc­u­men­taries and just real­ized what a priv­i­lege that was to meet Dr. Zipper.
Fur­ther, I felt proud that the Philip­pines had pro­vid­ed refuge to some 1,200 Jews just pri­or to the brunt of World War Two, the Zip­pers among them.

#World­WarT­wo #WWII #mani­lan­ers #Jew­s­in­Philip­pines #Mani­lasym­pho­ny­orches­tra

Filed Under: Nonfiction, Uncategorized Tagged With: Holocaust, World War II, World War Two, WWII

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Welcome!

I am a daugh­ter of the Philip­pines and an adopt­ed daugh­ter of Amer­i­ca. I have also trav­eled to many places so I am also a daugh­ter of the Earth. My expe­ri­ences have found their way into my sto­ries, which try to depict char­ac­ters caught in impor­tant moments in their lives, sit­u­a­tions that force them to act, make deci­sions, change. I try to see the world from my own point of view, not the dom­i­nant West­ern one, thus my inter­est in his­to­ry, cul­ture, and set­ting. But my char­ac­ters car­ry my sto­ries; they are the most impor­tant in my sto­ry-telling. I have to dive deep into them to under­stand their human­i­ty – their good­ness as well as their bad­ness, their beau­ty as well as their ugli­ness. Just like us. Just like each of us. I need to know where they came from, where they are now, so I under­stand where they are going. Just like us.

Please read my full biog­ra­phy here

 

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