Deine Mami: Composer Notes

In 2015, my father received a phone call from the Sydney Jewish Museum. “Mr Weiss,” they
said, “we have come into possession of something that we think you should come and
see.” The museum had been donated an item that had mysteriously resurfaced in a pawn
shop in Bondi, NSW, and purchased by a man who kept it in his personal collection, only
to donate the diary to the Jewish Museum in honour of the 70th anniversary of the liberation
of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

This item was my late paternal grandmother Nelly’s autograph book, which she took with
her as a young girl when she and her family fled Berlin to New York and ultimately to Sydney,
Australia in 1938. It contains 63 pages filled with poems, drawings and letters from family
and friends that were a part of this journey and into her school years in Sydney. Tragically,
most of these inscriptions are from victims of the Shoah.

My piece Deine Mami (in English ‘Your Mami’) sets a poem inscribed in this autograph book
to song, written by my great-grandmother Cecille Merel on Nelly’s seventh birthday, 5
September 1936. It beautifully expresses a mother’s love for her daughter, while also
capturing the gloom and nervousness on in pre-war Germany.

My most heartfelt thanks to the Sydney Jewish Museum’s Roslyn Sugarman, who granted
me access to this precious family artefact and set me on a deeply personal creative journey.
This was the first time that I have seen my great-grandmother’s writing.

I extend my thanks to my wonderful friend Sandra Treydte who so graciously transliterated

and recorded the German inscription.
Transliteration & Translation

Ich war bei Dir wohl manche Nacht, hast Du mich I was with you many nights, did you not recognise
nicht erkannt?- me?
Hab oft ob Deinen Schlaf gewacht und hielt still Watched over your sleep and quietly held your
Deine Hand! hand!

Ich lauschte Deinem Atemzug, wohl manche, I listened to your breathing, hour after hour.
manche Stund. And as I wished so much for you, my mouth spoke
Und folgend meines Sehnens Flug, sprach Segen a blessing.
Dir mein Mund!-

Da ward zum Lied mein stilles Wort und sang Dir So my quiet word became a song and I sand a
tausendfach: thousand times:
“Mit Deinem Wesen klingt es fort und tönt mir innig It carries on with yourself and I hear it still
nach!”

Und Du, die Leben mir gebracht, And you who brought life to me, in our Land of
neu in unser Einsamland! Loneliness!
Weißt Du vom Traum der stillen Nacht? Do you know of the dream of the quiet night?
Sag: “hast Du mich erkannt?- Say, did you recognise me?

Deine Mami Your Mami

Berlin, den 5. September 1936 Berlin, 5 September 1936