A Holocaust survivor and late in life drummer will perform in Portland on Tuesday evening. Morning Edition Host Irwin Gratz spoke with Saul Dreier, a native of Poland, spent time in multiple concentration camps. He still doesn't know how he survived when millions of others, including his family members, didn't. For a time he was saved by work in German industrialist Oskar Schindler's factory during World War Two, which is where he says he heard music.
Saul Dreier: And they were playing. And I took my two spoons turning around, "thump, thump, thump," and they started to sing, and I started to clap the spoons.
Irwin Gratz: Dreier was liberated from a concentration camp in Austria by U.S. troops at war's end. He emigrated to the United States, married, lived for decades in New Jersey, retired to Florida, and then one day, at age 89 he got an idea.
One morning, I woke up, went on my computer, and I started to look the news, and I see a woman, 106 years old, a piano player, survived the concentration camp. It's Theresienst, and she's alive, and she plays piano. She was playing piano every day in London, her apartment for the neighbors. I am looking at this, I say, I gonna put together a Holocaust survivor band. And I go to my wife, and I tell her the same story. I told you what I saw on the computer. She says, "Sal (in Jewish) you're crazy." My wife to me. This was on a Thursday. Saturday, I came to the temple. We had services. After the services, God helps me. Then I'm sitting next to the Rabbi for lunch. I say, "Rabbi..." and told them the same story I'm telling you, the same story I told my my wife. So Rabbi says, "Well, Saul, look, you're already 89 years old, and what you needed for your retire, you retired several years but do whatever you please. I think you're crazy." And that's how it started. And I have opportunities and overnight I became a sensation, I play the drums, I entertain, I travel, and I gonna be 100 years old in a few months.
What's the message you want people to come away with?
Well, I've got two messages. Message one is we have to combat antisemitism. This is the first message. The second message I got, which I cherish. We owe — you, me — to sit now sitting next to me. Whoever's done the whole world, we all have one heart. We have to make sure that we live together. Don't fight because we all have the same thing. Nobody's more superior than another one. That's my aim. That's the message
Saul Dreier will speak and perform at Hannaford Hall on the University of Southern Maine campus on Tuesday Aug. 20 at 7 p.m.
Here is more information on the Holocaust Survivor Band. And here are tickets for the Portland show on Tuesday evening.
