Film Year-Round

Singing Up The Past

Date : Monday, November 9, 2026

Join for a three-part event with film, conversation, and live musical performance capturing the power of song through the Holocaust. A powerful short documentary captures the story of Guta Goldstein, a Polish-Australian Holocaust survivor who has kept alive a repertoire of songs from the Łódź ghetto and camps. Researcher and musicologist Dr. Joseph Toltz will discuss his new book and role in preserving music from the Holocaust, and will perform selected songs with accompaniment by the acclaimed Polish pianist Martin Labazevitch.

Buy Tickets

Share

Singing Up The Past

Join for a three-part event with a film screening, conversation, and live musical performance.

“When our yearning for food became unbearable, we sang” recalls Guta Goldstein, a 94-year-old Polish-Australian Holocaust survivor. Eight decades after she learned and sang them, Guta has kept a repertoire of songs from the Łódź ghetto alive, as she continues to perform them in private.

As a child in the ghetto, the songs gave Guta distraction, hope, and entertainment. In the camps, they became a way to focus, process trauma, to come to know others, and finally to retain a sense of humanity.

Through Guta’s songs, performed by her and by the Łódź Children’s Choir, Guta can “sing up” her past. Guta’s story is a unique testimony through song. Guta’s story is presented in a film about memory, survival, and the power of music.

On the occasion of the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, JxJ is proud to present Dr. Joseph Toltz (The University of Sydney), who will present his documentary “Singing up the Past: the songs of Guta Goldstein,” and discuss the significance of song in Holocaust history and memory. He will also perform material from his recently published and critically acclaimed book, “Out of the Depths: the first collection of Holocaust songs”.

Joseph Toltz will sing selected songs with accompaniment by award-winning Polish pianist Martin Labazevitch.

Dr Joseph Toltz is an ethnomusicologist in Jewish Studies, and Research Manager in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. An expert on musical experiences of Holocaust Studies and Jewish music and its migrations in Anglophone countries.

Joseph is an active musician: composer, singer, choir director and arranger. He works primarily in the Jewish community, with his arrangements having premiered at Hamer Hall (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, 2024) and Wigmore Hall (Holocaust Memorial Day, 2019). He continues to serve Jewish congregations across Sydney, and his arrangements can be found in the collections of Synagogue choirs across Australia.

Praised by critics in Europe and the United States for his lyricism, virtuosity and an intensity of performance, pianist Martin Labazevitch appeared in many concert halls and festivals in Poland, Ukraine, Finland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Peru and the United States. Born in Poland, Mr. Labazevitch studied at the Odessa Conservatory in Ukraine and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. In 2019 he received Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Rome School of Music, Drama and Art in Washington D.C. He has been a soloist with leading orchestras in Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Japan, and the United States. Of his debut album release of the Chopin Concerto with the Beethoven Academy Orchestra, ConcertoNet wrote, “…he pleasantly refrains from overtaxing Chopin’s conclusive Allegro vivace with shimmering grandeur and eloquent precision that could even rival that of Arthur Rubinstein.” After his debut at Carnagie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, The Strad Magazine wrote: “… exuberant, multi-faceted, …gripping from first note to last.”