The Broward County high school students listened intently to 88-year-old Ivan Gluck tell his terrifying experience as a Holocaust survivor during World War II.
Born in Hungary, Gluck was only seven years old in 1944 when his father was taken by Nazi soldiers to a labor camp. Gluck and his family eventually traveled to Budapest and were reunited with their father. The family spent months hiding from the Nazis until the end of WWII.
Helping the family evade the Nazis, said Gluck, was Raoul Wallenberg, who is credited with helping at least 20,000 Hungarian Jews escape the Holocaust.
After hearing Gluck tell his tale, the Broward students turned the riveting story of survival into lyrics to a song about one of the darkest chapters in human history.
"Now the bombs have dropped and my fear, something along those lines" one student thought aloud. Another one completed the thought: "The angels were calling." Their classmates ooh-ed and ahh-ed.
"Wow, when the audience goes, 'ooh,' you're onto something," said project leader Jeff Jacob.
Jacob, co-bandleader of JewGrass Revival, a bluegrass style band performing with the students, was the one to plant the seed for this project through Testimony to Teach, guiding students as they transform Holocaust survivor testimony into original music.
Using the arts to reinforce what students have been learning in class is "pretty powerful and that makes it unique," Jacob told WLRN.
"You can hear someone crying in any language and you know they're going through a hard time," Jacob said. "I can hear a song in Spanish and only know a few of the words but if I love the melody and the beat then I can still really enjoy that song."
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The group of about 30 students from Cooper City High and Everglades High schools wrote the verses of the song. Jacob pre-wrote the chorus before the meeting in February with Gluck at the David Posnack Jewish Community Center in Davie.
"The reason the song is called 'You Can Be a Candle' and the line in the chorus 'There's a moment in the life of every survivor when you realize you can make it through' is to try to provide a more universal and hopeful message to counter the horrible darkness and trauma that is this heavy topic — the Holocaust," he said.
Immersive learning
Rabbi Leon Weissberg gives educational tours at the community center and uses different art mediums to communicate the infinite layers of emotion attached to the evils of the Holocaust.
"Through art, we can express with kids that there are a lot of ways to express and understand the Holocaust," Weissberg told WLRN.
He also imprints on students how important it is to stand up for others and not be an inactive witness of cruelty.
"There's just so many different understandings of how people try to explain themselves about the Holocaust," Weissberg said. "Also we try to bring it into making it current. In other words, what are the lessons of the Holocaust and how do we apply that?"
And as the number of survivors worldwide shrinks, Weissberg said this songwriting project helps preserve their testimonies to be passed down for generations to come.
A report last year from the international social justice non-profit The Claims Conference estimates that nearly 50% of all Holocaust survivors worldwide will pass away within the next six years.
Zainab Salam, a freshman at Everglades High, says this approach to understanding the Holocaust reaches more profoundly for the youth "because music is what everybody's basically connecting off."
"I feel like if I was in a desperate situation like that, especially being close and having a close relationship with God, I feel like in distress and in that moment, I'd look for something else to really get me by," said Cooper City High senior Maximus Rios. "Whether it be Judaism, whether it be Christianity, whatever the case may be, I feel like latching on, having something to really guide you through that desperate situation is something that I actually used in that moment."
'The future is the youth'
With the lyrics squared away, students split into groups to run through the song a few times before recording it. They practiced the harmonies in a large room of the center and got the jitters out before it was time for them to be called to the mic.
A make-shift recording studio stood off to the side of the the stage in the center's auditorium. A handful of students were called at a time to lay down their voice.
Jacobs recorded with them, and cueing them on when to sing and giving notes about the harmonies they practiced.
"A spark in the dark, you can be a candle," they call out. "In the window of our hearts, a beacon of truth. There's the light of a survivor in every one of you."
It's a message that resonates with Gluck. His spark in the dark during the Holocaust was Wallenberg.
"It's really a miracle when you think about it. Where did this young man come from and who sent him? He did all things possible to save a human being," Gluck says.
Every day he thanks God for sending Wallenberg into this world. It's people like him "why you have to believe in the goodness of humanity."
People like the students, too.
"The future is the youth," Gluck says. "And I believe that human being is good. But it's his choice to know which avenue to go down. And when you have good you extend that to other people and there's no other greater feeling. I think that's the greatest feeling in the world."
The finished song with the music video is out now.
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