{"id":19461,"date":"2014-11-04T09:12:55","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T15:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=19461"},"modified":"2014-11-04T09:12:55","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T15:12:55","slug":"at-97-holocaust-survivor-and-mandolin-player-emily-kessler-gets-her-lincoln-center-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/at-97-holocaust-survivor-and-mandolin-player-emily-kessler-gets-her-lincoln-center-debut\/","title":{"rendered":"At 97, Holocaust survivor and mandolin player Emily Kessler gets her Lincoln Center debut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By RAFFI WINEBURG<\/p>\n<p>For Emily Kessler, a Holocaust survivor, the prospect of performing at Lincoln Center\u2019s Avery Fisher Hall is less worrying than figuring out what to wear for the occasion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI came to the conclusion,\u201d she said, in an interview at her apartment on Manhattan&#8217;s Upper West Side, \u201cthat what is the difference between playing in front of three people instead of 300?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At 97, Kessler is short and slightly hunched. Along with old photographs and birthday cards, prescription pill bottles are scattered throughout her apartment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Age is not easy,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19462\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a title=\"Emily Kessler\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Kessler-1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19462\" class=\"wp-image-19462 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Kessler-1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Kessler 1\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Kessler-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Kessler-1-1024x682.jpg 1024w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/200;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19462\" class=\"wp-image-19462 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Kessler-1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Kessler 1\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Kessler-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Kessler-1-1024x682.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-19462\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Emily Kessler strums the mandolin in her Upper West Side apartment. (Raffi Wineburg\/JTA)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Nevertheless, the soon-to-be 98-year-old is still sharp. And although she moves at a crawling pace to retrieve old black-and-white pictures, when she sits down to play the mandolin, her fingers work just fine.<\/p>\n<p>Kessler will perform and sing songs in Yiddish and Russian Monday night at the 80th Anniversary Benefit Gala for the nonprofit organization Blue Card \u2014 the only organization in the United States solely dedicated to providing assistance to Holocaust survivors like herself.<\/p>\n<p>Kessler has been a Blue Card client for almost two decades. They&#8217;ve arranged free dental work, orthopedic shoes and even all-expense-paid retreats in the Berkshires. Masha Pearl, Blue Card&#8217;s executive director, approached Kessler about playing at the gala several months earlier. Kessler, who likes to be prepared, started practicing right away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be prepared,\u201d she says, \u201cis to respect other people, and to respect yourself, your dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She had no chance to prepare in 1941, when Nazi officers came to her home in Khmilnyk, Ukraine and shot her parents and brother in front of her. And nothing could have prepared the young widow (her husband, a Soviet soldier, was killed during the Nazi invasion) to care for her 2-year-old son in a Ukrainian labor camp, to treat the open sores on her wrists and arms with nonexistent medical supplies, or to gather the strength for work \u2014 construction and toilet cleaning \u2014 without food or water.<\/p>\n<p>Somehow she did, however. And her survival, which she calls a \u201cmiracle\u201d still confounds her today.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow did we manage there without food or water? I don\u2019t know, for that, I try not to explain, because it\u2019s difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kessler eventually escaped the camp, bringing her son along, using false papers. She lived on the run for two years before relocating to Kyrgyztan. There, in her late 20s, she tried to reassemble the broken pieces of her life. She graduated from university and worked as an editor in a publishing house.<\/p>\n<p>But the damage was done. After the war, the \u201ccatastrophe\u201d as she calls it, Kessler was plagued by guilt, sadness. She lived in a constant state of mourning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was very sad, not smiling. I thought, \u2018I don\u2019t have the right to smile\u2019. It felt like a crime, like I was guilty of smiling.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The mandolin, which she began playing at age 10 in her school band, symbolized a time of happiness, so Kessler avoided it entirely.<\/p>\n<p>In Kyrgyztan, where Kessler lived after the war, anti-Semitism was still rampant. So at 60 years old, knowing no one in the U.S. and speaking scant English, Kessler immigrated to the United States (her son, who now lives in Michigan, immigrated several years after her).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was happy to leave,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I had an opportunity to go, and I took it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For five years though, she was still \u201cnot ready\u201d to play music. But walking in Manhattan one day in 1985, she saw a mandolin in the window of a music store.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter time, you think to yourself, &#8216;how long should I be in mourning?&#8217;\u201d she said. She bought the instrument, and has been playing for the last 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt helped just to go away from the sadness,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is not always good to feel this sad. I used to be on the street, and without any thinking, I would feel my heart to be full of tears. No more, now it\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Things move slowly these days for Kessler. A cancer survivor who grapples with various health problems and relies on a pacemaker, she spends a good deal of time with doctors, but nonetheless manages to live on her own. She likes a light beer every so often, and going to Upper West Side cafes, although she thinks the portions are always too big.<\/p>\n<p>She still goes on walks around the neighborhood, and is often asked what her secret is for living a long time. She shrugs, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know. My secret is that there is no secret.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"At%2097%2C%20Holocaust%20survivor%20and%20mandolin%20player%20Emily%20Kessler%20gets%20her%20Lincoln%20Center%20debut\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1884],"tags":[6298,8790,8795,6300,6299,8788,494],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19461"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19463,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19461\/revisions\/19463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}