Tribute to a Survivor

She’d hide behind

a new identity — that was it.

She wouldn’t be Zhanna.

She’d use an alias.

She’d drop the Zh from her name

become Anna —

smaller, plainer,

more able to blend in.

She’d begin again.

A for Anna.

A for alive.

In 1941, Nazi Germany launched a surprise invasion of the U.S.S.R., bombing buildings, executing political prisoners, and causing a mass exodus of Ukrainian evacuees who fled for refugee camps for the remainder of Germany’s occupation and the duration of World War II. Among the survivors was American journalist Greg Dawson’s mother, Zhanna Arshanskaya Dawson, who as a child was able to hide her Jewish identity and wound up as a piano performer in a German variety act. She and her sister were eventually rescued by a U.S. Army Lieutenant and she was enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. This stranger-than-fiction story was turned into a lyrical nonfiction story-in-verse for children by Greg Dawson and author Susan Hood with “Alias Anna: A True Story About Outwitting the Nazis” published last year by HarperCollins.

On Sunday, July 16, Greg and his wife Candy Dawson will appear at Music Mountain in a pre-performance talk before The Chamber Music Sunday concert to discuss the life of Zhanna Dawson, who often played at Music Mountain in the 1950s and 60s. This will be followed by a concert Penderecki String Quartet with pianist Anya Alexeyev performing selections by Johann Sebastian Bach, Béla Bartók, who protested against the Nazis in Hungary, and Erwin Schulhoff, a Jewish composer who was blacklisted during World War II.