feeling it in the neck

Lotte Lenya:Anti-Semitism always existed in Germany. I wasn’t aware of it at first – when you’re young, you aren’t so aware. But I wasn’t blind to it, either, especially after Mahagonny. One time, I was walking down the street with a friend and her husband, and some Nazis were walking behind us, and one of them hit her husband in the neck with an apple core. What could he do? He didn’t want to get beaten to death, so he did nothing. Another time, I went to a movie with Kurt and there was this woman just screaming at some Jews, “If you don’t like it here, go back to Palestine!” The Jews said nothing – they didn’t want to cause a riot. They would have been the ones who got arrested….

---Each of them tried to share Weill with me, in pictures, letters, anecdotes, even imitations. Lys used to say that Weill always had a particular little smile on his face, which she found in very few of his photographs, and which she tried to demonstrate for me. But because she looked nothing like him, I’m not sure I got the right impression. Weill had no children. Which made of us at the Foundation heirs in the legal sense but also in the sense of family. The things you might know about an uncle, even if he died long before you were born, are things that I know about Kurt Weill. Pointless, random bits of information that no biographer could ever use. But they are his legacy, as much as his music, and they make of him my uncle — Onkel Kurt.---Read More:http://billmadison.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html

…Kurt said nothing about attacks against him in the Nazi papers – they would say stupid things. Like, “There was an expectant mother in the first row. We hope her milk won’t be sour after hearing this music.” And I would get so angry, you know? Kurt said nothing – just read the papers and said nothing. He only got angry about little things, like when his pencils weren’t sharpened.

But you knew the time was coming to get out of Germany. You felt it here, in your neck, it was coming. Sure, sure.Read More:http://carlarossi.blogspot.com/2007/06/lenya-one-woman-show-based-on-life-of.html