Broadway's "Harmony" tells story of all-male singing group forced to disband during the Holocaust
NEW YORK -- Saturday marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day -- a time to remember victims and survivors of the war.
One show on Broadway is doing it every day, telling the true story of a popular all-male singing group that was disbanded because some of the members were Jewish.
CBS New York recently sat down with the people behind the musical "Harmony."
The production shows there was so much promise for the Berlin-based group Comedian Harmonists, which was formed in the late 1920s. The six men -- three Jews and three non-Jews -- crossed paths with the likes of Josephine Baker and Albert Einstein.
They performed all over the world, including at Carnegie Hall, before returning to Germany shortly before the Nazis assumed power.
"I absolutely have a sense of duty to share the story of those who were ... who did perish," said Zal Owen, who portrays the group's founding member, Harry Frommermann.
The group was forced to split up, but everyone survived. Many of the Jewish members' relatives, however, did not, a personal tie for Owen, who said at least a dozen of his relatives were killed in Auschwitz.
Frommerman's pictures and personal letters hang in Owen's dressing room.
"Those letters directly talk about the trauma he went through," Owen said. "He sort of has a lost sense of identity in his older years. He talks about needing to wait for restitution payments from the German government to be able to buy recording equipment."
The last surviving member of the group, Josef Roman Cycowski, spoke in 1995 about initially fleeing to Vienna with the two other Jewish singers. They weren't safe there, either.
"We knew that we cannot continue. We have to separate," Cycowski said.
He eventually immigrated to California. In the late '90s, lyricist and book author Bruce Sussman and composer Barry Manilow met with him, and refer to him as "Rabbi."
"Rabbi's entire family, his mother, father, sisters and brothers, all perished," Sussman said. "This is a show about the quest for harmony in what turned out to be the most discordant chapter in human history."
Julie Benko's character, Ruth, is a Jew married to a non-Jewish member of the group. She stands up to the Nazis, and she was later murdered.
"My bio in the program, I dedicate it to the memory of the nameless who perished in the Holocaust," Benko said.
The story touches on what led up to the Holocaust, something that is poignant more now than ever.
"It's about how a society would allow the destruction of art, the destruction of passion and career," Owen said. "It's clear what could come next."
"In a time when antisemitism and fascism are on the rise in a huge way here at home ... it just feels so timely to tell this story," Benko added.
After immigrating to the Upper West Side, Frommerman later returned to Germany to be a translator in the Nuremberg trials.
"He had a score to settle," Sussman said.
The last Broadway performance of "Harmony" is on Feb. 4.