SOURCE: '"A Survivor from Warsaw' as Personal Parable," in Music & Letters, Vol. 76, No. 1, February, 1995, pp. 52-63.

In the following essay, Strasser contends that A Survivor from Warsaw is the story of Schoenberg 's experiences as a Jew.

Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46, is undoubtedly one of his most immediately powerful expressions and, in terms of public acceptance, one of the more successful of his later works. Widely and justifiably viewed as a fitting memorial to the millions of Jews who lost their lives during World War II, A Survivor from Warsaw can also be considered as a musical and literary testament to Schoenberg's own spiritual struggle—a personal parable of his experiences as a Jew.

The idea for a work honouring the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany was apparently suggested to Schoenberg in early 1947 by Corinne Chochem, a dancer of Russian origin who had organized...