Membra Nostri: Hands of Hope

Fugitive Footsteps for baritone soloist and a cappella mixed chorus (2002)
Poetry of Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Nelly Sachs
in a composition honoring the survivors of the Holocaust

Fugitive Footsteps is a tribute to Holocaust survivors. Jewish poet Nelly Sachs survived by fleeing from Germany to Sweden in 1940, and she spent the following phase of her career bearing witness to the Holocaust through her writing. She was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature for her work. I chose her poem “World, do not ask those snatched from death” because it reflects the experiences of Holocaust survivors like Sachs and my mother, both of whom fled Germany and survived the war in neutral European countries. Also significant in my choice of the poem is the universality of its meaning and message, both of which address the plights of survivors of all tragedies. My hope is that my setting of Sachs’ words will promote healing, awareness, and understanding.

Fugitive Footsteps is dedicated to my mother, Alice Bacharach Sherr. Born in Egelsbach, Germany in 1931, she was sent on a Kindertransport to a children’s home in Switzerland in 1939. She was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust.

- Laurence Sherr, Composer