Strength To Survive
Rush bassist-vocalist Geddy Lee captures his mother's Holocaust experience in his music.
SCOTT R. BENARDE
Special to the Jewish News
T
he Canadian rock trio Rush
draws from an impressive song
catalog spanning four decades
during its current 30th anniversary
tour, including classics such as "New
World Man," "Tom Sawyer" and
"Freewill." Fans also may hear selec-
tions from the band's newest album, _
Feedback, a collection of favorite songs
by other acts, including rock standards
such as "Summertime Blues" and
"Heart Full of Soul."
But it is another song in the Rush
repertoire that concertgoers should pay
close attention to when the band per-
forms Tuesday, June 8, at the DTE
Energy Music Theatre. The 20 year-
old concert standard "Red Sector A,"
from the 1984 album Grace Under
Pressure, comes from a deeply emotion-
al and personal place in the heart of
lead singer and bassist Geddy Lee.
The seeds for the song were planted
nearly 60 years ago in April 1945,
when British soldiers liberated the Nazi
German concentration camp Bergen-
Belsen. Lee's mother, Manya (now
Mary) Rubenstein, was among the sur-
vivors. (His father, Morris Weinrib,
was liberated from Dachau a few weeks
later.)
"The whole album," Lee says of
Grace Under Pressure, "is about being
on the brink and having the courage
and strength to survive."
Though "Red Sector A," like much
of the album from which it comes, is
set in a bleak, apocalyptic future, what
Lee calls "the psychology" of the song
comes directly from a story his mother
told him about the day she was liberat-
ed.
"I once asked my mother her first
thoughts upon being liberated," Lee
says during a phone conversation. "She
didn't believe [liberation] was possible.
She didn't believe that if there was a
society outside the camp, [it] could
allow [such a thing] to exist, so she
believed society was done in."
In fact, when Manya Rubenstein
-
Scott R. Benarde is the author of
Stars of David: Rock 'n' Roll's Jewish
Stories (Brandeis University Press).
6/ 4
2004
44
Rush: Left to right, guitarist Alex Lifeson, drummer-lyricist Neil Peart and bassist-vocalist Geddy Lee.
looked out the window of the camp
building in which she was working on
April 15, 1945, and saw guards with
both arms raised, she thought they
were doing a double salute just to be
arrogant. She did not realize British
forces had overrun the camp. Manya
and her fellow prisoners, says Lee,
"were so malnourished, their brains
were not functioning, and they could-
n't conceive they'd be liberated,"
because they thought civilized society
no longer existed.
It is easy to see why Manya
Rubenstein had given up on civiliza-
tion. She and her future husband
Morris were still in their teens — and
strangers to one another — when they
were interned in a labor camp in their
hometown of Staracohwice (also
known as Starchvitzcha), Poland, in
1941. Prisoners there were forced to
work in a lumber mill, a stone quarry
and uniform and ammunition manu-
facturing plants.
From Staracohwice, about an hour
south of Warsaw, Manya and Morris,
along with many members of both
their families, were sent to Auschwitz.
Eventually Morris was shipped to
Dachau in southern Germany, and
Manya to Bergen-Belsen in northern
Germany.
Thirty-five thousand people died in
Bergen-Belsen from starvation, disease,
brutality and overwork, according to
information from the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum. Another 10,000
people, too ill and weak to save, died
during the first month after liberation.
Lee told his mother's story to band
drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, and,
says Lee, Pert took that sentiment and
wrote the words to "Red Sector A" to
accompany Lee's music.
For a song that's supposed to be set
in some unstated, undated future,
lyrics such as "Ragged lines of ragged
grey/Skeletons, they shuffle away/Shooting
guards and smoking guns/Will cut down
the unlucky ones"sound realistic and
reportorial. Perhaps it is the music with
its pounding drums, chilling guitar
and ominous synthesizer that transport
the listener to a yet-to-come time and
place. But maybe it is simply easier for
Lee to deal with this song as metaphor
instead of family history.
Lee was born Gary Lee Weinrib in
Toronto on July 29, 1953 ("Geddy"
comes from his mother's Yiddish man-
gling of "Gary"). His parents had
immigrated there in 1947 and opened
a discount variety store.
They had come together after the
war and lived in the officers' quarters
of Bergen-Belsen after it was turned
into a displaced persons camp. They
were among 2,000 couples that mar-
ried in the camp during the first few
months after liberation.
Unlike many Holocaust survivors,
Lee's parents did not bottle up or hide
their experiences. Lee began hearing
the horror stories as early as age 8.
Though his mother insists she never
spoke to her children about the
Holocaust when they were young, Lee
remembers the stress and nightmares
the stories triggered. "These were the
things that happened to them during
the most formative time in their lives.
Some people go to horseback riding
camp; my parents went to concentra-
tion camp," Lee says, trying to explain
why stories of Holocaust brutality and
cruelty were so common at home.
Manya and Morris gave their chil-
dren a Jewish education, and Lee had a
bar mitzvah at 13. Unfortunately, his
father died the year before from chron-
ic health problems that took root in
the camps.
His mother, like many Holocaust
survivors who became parents, was
overly protective of her three children.