Have you heard Vera’s story?

Vera Herman Goodkin was just shy of her 9th birthday when her hometown of Uzhorod, Czechoslovakia, was occupied by the Nazis. She spent the next four years in hiding, until she was finally rescued and taken to freedom under the protection of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. “Vera’s Story: A Holocaust Remembrance” will be rebroadcast on WWFM The Classical Network today at 11 a.m. This riveting and award-winning program also includes music by composers who fled Europe or perished during the War, as well as works written in memory of the millions of victims of the Holocaust.

Later, between 4 and 6 p.m., we’ll hear music by Gideon Klein and Pavel Haas, who lost their lives at Fürstengrube and Auschwitz, respectively, alongside performances by Holocaust survivors, including cellist Janos Starker, conductor Karel Ančerl, pianist Edith Kraus, harpsichordist Zuzana Růžičková, and violinist Henry Meyer, a founding member of the LaSalle Quartet. Růžičková died in September at the age of 90, and Kraus lived to be 100. Also featured will be Eric Zeisl’s uplifting “Requiem Ebraico,” written in memory of his father, and some of John Williams’ music for “Schindler’s List.”

Then, at 6 p.m., it’s another “Music from Marlboro.” The hour will begin with a Divertissement for Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon, by Erwin Schulhoff, a composer who was intercepted by the Nazis while in the process of fleeing Czechoslovakia for the Soviet Union. He died of tuberculosis in a concentration camp in Bavaria.

The program will conclude on a happier note, with Rudolf Serkin and friends performing Antonin Dvořák’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major. Serkin had lived with violinist Adolf Busch and his family in Berlin in the 1920s, as he established himself as one of Europe’s outstanding young pianists. The musicians remained in Germany until 1933. Busch, who was not Jewish, vehemently opposed the National Socialists. With the rise of Adolf Hitler, Serkin and the Busches relocated to Switzerland. They arrived in the United States with the outbreak of war in 1938, and settled in Vermont in the 1940s. There, alongside flutist Marcel Moyse, they founded the Marlboro Music School and Festival in 1951, having successfully eluded the horrors that had claimed so many others to create something of lasting beauty – a chamber music retreat in what must have seemed like a bucolic paradise.

The music continues to enrich. Tune in for “Vera’s Story,” on this Yom HaShoah eve – Holocaust Memorial Day begins at sunset – at 11 a.m. EDT, and then listen for more music of remembrance, from 4 to 7 p.m., on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page