"Le Cabaret Interdit": teaching about the Holocaust through music

In the framework of the Resistance and Deportation National Competition, the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne (OSB) and the "Classe d’O" project proposed using music to address the Holocaust in primary schools. Pupils in Pleudihen-sur-Rance (Brittany) participated in the production of Le Cabaret Interdit, a show that paid homage to composers who fell victim to Nazism.

A historical, artistic and memorial educational project

From October to May, "Classe d’O" pupils took part in various workshops on music and deportation during the Second World War. Their teachers and OSB musicians helped them learn about banned works and composers who were victims of Nazism, the functioning of a professional orchestra and music in general.

In April, a class at the "Entre Terre et Mer" primary school was invited to spend a week in residence with the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne. The pupils attended Le Cabaret Interdit rehearsals and focused on some of the "forbidden works" in the show’s program under the supervision of percussionist and composer Richard Dubelski. Composed by interned musicians, performed in camps or ghettos or banned by the Nazi regime, all the works were put into their historical context.

A year-end public performance

At the end of the year, the children had an opportunity to show what they learned in the workshops and during the week in residence with the OSB.

Then, they mounted the stage of Le Cabaret Interdit to perform, accompanied by the OSB, The Children’s Hymn, which Bertold Brecht and Hanns Eisler composed in 1950.

The program received funding from the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah.