Kaddish (2017)

Prayer for the departed - powerful and true story of the time in the concentration camp, told by Mühlrad's grandfather Michael Bliman.

"The basic idea behind this work is that we must bear witness to the Holocaust so that it doesn´t happen again, because then it would all have been in vain. My grandfather was a survivor, and I am a third-generation survivor. It is a part of my heritage, a part of my history."

The work is composed as an imagined dialogue between Jacob and his grandfather.

"I ask the questions now that I did not ask while he was alive; questions about what happened in the concentration camps Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, where he, among other places, had been confined. The answers are my grandfather´s own words, from the testimonies that he left behind.
The work begins with a quotation of Eli Wiesel; 'for the living and for the dead we must bear witness', and it also contains fragments from Kaddish, a prayer for the deceased, which has given the work its name.

Then there are sections that are entirely lacking in text. Music has the advantage that it can communicate what words cannot do."