Norbert Glanzberg
In his twenties he lived in Germany, where he began his career scoring films for directors including Billy Wilder and Max Ophüls.
When the Nazi regime came to power there in 1933, he, as a Jew, fled to Paris, where he performed in nightclubs under bandleaders such as Django Reinhardt, which is where he first met Piaf.
Norbert Glanzberg was born from Jewish parents in Rohatyn in Galicia in the dual Austro-Hungarian Royal and Imperial Monarchy.
He entered the Conservatory of Würzburg in 1922, already a passionate, and he was appointed as assistant conductor of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1929, where he would meet Béla Bartók and Alban Berg.
[4][5] When the Nazi regime came into power in Germany in 1933, Joseph Goebbels referred to Glanzberg in the NSDAP newspaper, Der Angriff, as a degenerate Jewish artist.
In 1938, he met French singer Lily Gauty, and wrote Le bonheur est entré dans mon cœur (Happiness has entered my heart) for her.
"[6]: 80 The “pampam” of the heartbeat of the little Polish Jew from Galicia would quickly turn into the “pampam” of a heart in anguish, forced to flee and lead a clandestine life, the arrests, the humiliation of forced anonymity, of false identities...He often writes in dismal hovels while his melodies go off to tour the world.
But he always feared that his physical features might betray him to the French police or informers who had begun rounding up Jews and other undesirable refugees.
[11][12][13] By 1942, the Vichy government in unoccupied France also began excluding Jews from most professions, which led to Glanzberg's name now being kept off of concert programs.
[13] Actress Marie Bell and Corsican singer Tino Rossi, with Piaf's financial help, organized his successful escape just before he was to be deported to a concentration camp.
[6]: 81 Bigard and his family had helped a number of Piaf's other Jewish friends, including film director Marcel Blistène, take shelter and thereby survive the war.
[6]: 81 When the farm itself became too dangerous, Piaf asked another friend, Countess Lily Pastré, to hide him at Montredon, her chateau outside of Marseille.
[6]: 81 After the war, it was learned that the countess had sheltered some forty other Jewish composers and musicians from the French police, including Clara Haskil.
[6]: 81 The Germans eventually invaded that part of southern France, which led Glanzberg to flee to Nice, under the protection of Tino Rossi's Corsican relatives.
[15] In 1983, Glanzberg went back to classical music and composed a series of lieder from a collection of poems written during the war by concentration camp inmates, La mort est un maître de l’Allemagne (der Tod ist ein ... Meister aus Deutschland), the chorus of what is perhaps the greatest poem by Paul Celan, Todesfuge (Death Fugue).
