| Joža Karas | |
|---|---|
| Born | Josef Karas May 3, 1926 Warsaw, Poland |
| Died | December 5, 2008 (aged 82) Bloomfield, Connecticut, USA |
| Nationality | Czech-American |
| Occupation | Musician, teacher |
Josef "Joža" Karas (May 3, 1926 — December 5, 2008) was a Polish-born, Czech-American musician and teacher who located and made public music composed by inmates who worked at the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt during World War II.
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Karas emigrated to the United States in 1948 via Colombia and Canada. A violinist and music historian by vocation, he taught at the Hartt School of Music for more than 50 years. He also performed with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra until his retirement in 2006.[1]
He spent years searching for the WWII era musical compositions made by Jews in the Nazi concentration camps.[2] In 1970 he read that some musical compositions and fragments had been found at the Terezin concentration camp and been donated to Prague's Jewish State Museum, including a version of Hans Krasa's children's opera, Brundibar, which was performed at Terezin many times between September 1943 and October 1944.[3]
Karas conducted the North American premiere of Brundibar in Czech in 1975 and the English language premiere in 1977 after he and his first wife, the former Milada Javora (died 1974), translated the opera into English. In 1993 Channel Classics recorded his version as part of its Composers From Theresienstadt series.[4]
Karas was born in Warsaw, Poland to Christian parents from Czechoslovakia. He learned to play the violin at an early age.[5] His father, Frantisek, was then a government official, a professor of Polish and an author who wrote about Czech customs, who reportedly helped Jews as part of the World War II underground.
Joža Karas died in Bloomfield, Connecticut, near Hartford, at the age of 82. He was survived by his second wife (Anne Karas), five sons and one daughter (Francis, Henry, Michael, Joseph, Alexander, and Joan K. Carrasquillo); seven grandchildren, and three siblings.