“Wir treffen uns am Schluss” (We Shall Meet at the End)—Kurt Sonnenfeld (1921–1997) at Ferramonti: The Persecution, the Exile, the Internment, the Music

Abstract

This chapter discusses the Austrian Jewish composer Kurt Sonnenfeld (1921–1997) and his years of persecution in Austria and in Italy (1938–1947). After the declaration of war in June 1940, foreign Jews in Italy were arrested and taken to internment camps, mostly located in remote areas of the southern regions. After his arrest in Milan, Kurt Sonnenfeld lived through the entire rise and fall of Mussolini’s largest internment camp: Ferramonti, in Calabria. Sonnenfeld endured for four years and eight months in the middle of nowhere, with more than 2000 internees, mostly Jewish intelligentsia coming from all over Europe. There, with other professional musicians, he tried to reconstruct a cultural identity through the only purpose of his existence: music. Newly discovered documents and research now gives us the possibility to begin to reconstruct the very complex connection between internment camps and musical culture in Italy.