When he was just a boy, Saul Dreier was pulled out of school and placed in Nazi labor camps, concentration camps and eventually one of Oskar Schindler’s factories. Dreier’s biggest piece of advice to his audience on Wednesday evening: “Educate your children and educate your grandchildren.”
Dreier, the sole Holocaust survivor of his family, who lost out on an education of his own, performed his “Survival Through Song” show on Wednesday evening at the Newhall Family Theatre on Walnut Street in Newhall. During the event, which was hosted by Chabad of SCV, Dreier shared his story, played what he called “general Klezmer music,” answered questions from those in the audience about his life, and auctioned off drumsticks that he autographed.
“I was 13 years old when the war broke out,” 99-year-old Dreier told his audience on Wednesday. “You have to understand that those were my best teenage years … I don’t wish on my enemy (that they) shouldn’t have education.”
Chabad of SCV Rabbi Choni Marozov introduced Dreier to an almost packed house of people by first relating a story about a recent funeral he was officiating. He shared how he was standing next to the coffin when a young person approached him and whispered, “What’s the Wi-Fi password here?”
Shocked, Marozov said he told the individual sternly, “Respect for the dead,” to which the young person replied, “Uppercase or lowercase?”
The crowd laughed. And then Marozov made his point:
“What’s the password to a meaningful and purposeful life?” he asked the crowd. “You’re about to find out when you meet an extraordinary individual, Saul Dreier, who we have the tremendous, tremendous pleasure of hosting tonight in Santa Clarita.”
The audience applauded as Dreier, the drummer of his world-famous Holocaust Survivor Band, stepped onto the stage to play for them.
Marozov had explained earlier in an interview that when he learned Dreier would be coming to Southern California for a few days to perform in the Los Angeles area, the rabbi took the chance to see if the drummer would be willing to come to Santa Clarita. Marozov had a feeling the community would be thrilled to see Dreier in person.
“We asked him if he could stay another day, to come up here, and he graciously did,” Marozov said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear a 99-year-old man who has such a story, such a history, such a positive attitude, despite everything he went through. He just expresses it in his music and his drumming, and it’s a beautiful lesson that, regardless of what we go through in life, and the hardships, we can always look forward to a brighter future with a positive attitude and faith every day.”
Dreier performed with his clarinet player, Jaime Bronstein, from his Holocaust Survivor Band, and with Southern California-based performers Janice Mautner Markham on violin, Leeav Sofer on accordion and Adam Levy on bass from the band Mostly Kosher.
According to his website, Dreier was born on April 29, 1925, in Kraków, Poland. His youth, he said, was stopped short by World War II.
Dreier spoke about his family life before the war — about his mother and father, his grandparents and his younger sister, among other family, who would later die at the hands of Nazis. Dreier said he knows when his mother was killed, a date he recognizes every year, but he doesn’t know when his father and sister were killed.
Then there was life in the factory. Dreier repaired radiators for German airplanes. He spoke about meeting Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who’d eventually save the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust, as portrayed in the 1993 Academy Award-winning Steven Spielberg film, “Schindler’s List.”
“Schindler used to come down, and we used to kick the soccer ball — he was watching us playing a game,” Dreier said. “He used to come — not every Sunday, but at least once a month, twice a month — to watch us play in the concentration camp. We had barracks. The women were on that side, and the men were on that side. In between was open. So, that’s where we played ball. And he was sitting on the chair, watching us play because, in the concentration camp, we had a few very good soccer players. Among them was me, too.”
Dreier was not on Schindler’s list that saved so many workers, but Dreier did escape the Holocaust. In 1949, after the war had come to an end, he came to America, starting life anew in New Jersey. In 1980, he moved to Florida, and he’s been there since.
At 89 years old, Dreier formed his Holocaust Survivor Band to honor Holocaust victims and share a message of resilience through his music.
Marozov says Dreier faced a world that seemed broken and beyond despair, a world where faith and hope were tested.
“At an age when most people would’ve decided to rest, he chose to act, founding the Holocaust Survivor Band to ensure that the voices of the past are never silenced, and the music — the very things the Nazis tried to take from our people — continues to play,” Marozov said. “Tonight, as we listen to Saul’s story and hear him play, let’s take this message to heart: Memory alone is not enough. It must lead to action. We have to stand up to hate, educate the next generation, and ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are not just remembered, but live.”
Dreier and his band played songs that the audience got into, moved to, and celebrated. The band would play a few songs, then they’d break for Marozov to ask Dreier questions that the crowd asked via their cell phones. The band would play a couple more songs, and then there’d be more Q&A.
At one point in the evening when Dreier was speaking with the audience, he shared a story about how in a concentration camp, his wooden spoon, which he used to eat soup at the time, had broken. He didn’t know what to do because he wouldn’t be granted another spoon.
Dreier spoke to a friend in the camp:
“I said, ‘I had a wooden spoon. The spoon broke and I got nothing to eat with.’ He (Dreier’s friend) says, ‘Next week — this Friday — go into my locker and there’s going to be a spoon for you to eat your soup. That I give it to you.’ When I came to the locker, I find two spoons. Ladies and gentlemen, I was a rich man. Why? I took the spoons, turned them around, and I was clapping with them.”
Marozov, as if on cue (it was perfectly on cue), handed Dreier two spoons, and Dreier demonstrated how he made music with the spoons, creating a sound that perhaps led to him one day becoming a drummer.
Asked what got him through those dark days, Dreier said, “This question was asked to me many, many, many times by many, many people, and I have one answer: I don’t know.” Asked if he ever wanted to give up, he said never. He knew the war would one day come to an end. He persevered.
When the war finally came to a close, Dreier went to a hospital where they treated his gangrene. He said he lost a finger due to it.
“My hand was operated (on), and, ladies and gentlemen, with my disability,” he said, “I took the two sticks when I was 89 years old, and put together Holocaust Survivor Band, and I’m famous today all over the world.”
Later in the evening, Dreier auctioned off some of his drumsticks. The bidding started at $100 and eventually sold to Santa Clarita resident Steven Baron for $1,000. Baron asked for the drumsticks to be signed as the Rabbi wanted it, and for the sticks to be put on display in the Chabad house in memory of the event.
From his seat, Baron thanked Dreier. Dreier came off the stage to thank Baron and bless him.
Dreier and the band played several encores, and then guests, at the end of the evening, could go up on stage to take pictures with Dreier and get his autograph. People lined up to see him, expressing their gratitude for him and for what he does through his music and through his foundation.
“Educate your children and educate your grandchildren,” Dreier repeated over the course of the evening. It’s an idea he’s adamant about spreading by way of what he calls Saul’s Generation Foundation.
The goal, according to the foundation website, is to promote peace in the world, organize trips to memorial sites, help people of Polish origin who live abroad find and strengthen ties with Poland, and connect generations by activating the elderly and the youth.
Marozov thanked the crowd for their presence at Wednesday’s event. Their presence, he said, is a statement.
“It’s a declaration,” he said, “that we remember, that we hear, and we understand the sacred responsibility to keep the stories of our past alive in a world where too many seek to distort, to erase history. Your being here tonight demonstrates that we will never forget, and more importantly, we will act.”
To learn more about Dreier’s foundation, go to SaulDreier.com. For more about Chabad of SCV, go to ChabadSCV.com.
