L.A. Times music critic is Nazi-exiled composer, Walter Arlen, 98, whom Austrians honored with concert, documentary

"Walter Arlen's First Century" US Premiere at - Presented by LA Jewish Film Festival May 2019. Documentary/Austria/2018/94 minutes, English and German with English subtitles. Directed by Stephanus Domanig. 

Exile music is not written by those who life left unchallenged. Walter "Arlen" Aptowitzer is almost 100 years old, and the entire century comes to life in his stories and in his music; from the blue light of the last streetcar of his youth in Vienna to the golden sunsets in Los Angeles. Arlen was forced to flee Vienna in 1938 and immigrated to the United States, a journey that began as one of loneliness and depression. What kept him afloat was his musical talent. He took a job as the music critic for the Los Angeles Times, and stopped composing his own music. He only returned to it years later his works were first recorded and released when Arlen was 92. This sensitive film captures the complex story of a musician exiled, but who finally got to see his works performed late in life.

Watch trailer:


Woman in Gold"-storied attorney, Randy Schoenberg, describes the emigration of Jewish-Austrian creatives' in this interview, post-screening of "Walter Arlen's First Century" at the L.A. Jewish Film Festival:



 Walter Arlen interviewed at same screening: 


Question and Answers with Walter Arlen, director Stephanus Domanig, Randy Schoenberg, and Andreas Launer, the Consulate General of Austria

"Woman in Gold" attorney addresses Holocaust survivors concerned over revived European anti-Semitism; Israeli diplomat over Iran nuclear threat

The L.A. Museum of the Holocaust ("LAMOTH") program, which drew some 1,100 attendees, began at 2 p.m. and included city leaders, rabbis and others, who offered words of remembrance for the 6 million Jews who perished in the Shoah. 

Diplomats from Europe & Japan attended L.A. ceremony

“I hope we as Jews will stand up to make sure that just as Germany has accepted its role [in the Holocaust] and has spoken out, and other countries have done the same, it is time for us to see that in every national capital, that when we see the mass extermination of peoples we all have a responsibility to make sure that history is written,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said, speaking from the stage under a canopy set up for the day’s program. 

Other participants included Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR, who delivered the invocation; Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles David Siegel; Holocaust survivor Eva Brettler; The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles President Jay Sanderson; LAMOTH executive director Samara Hutman; and L.A. City Councilman Tom LaBonge, whose district the museum is located. Philanthropist Jona Goldrich, who donated funds toward the construction of the museum, was among those in the audience. (Ryan Tork, "Shoah commemoration brings both high and heavy spirits to Pan Pacific" in The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles)

Chronicled in JewTube's video clips: Randy Schoenberg, Pres., LA MOTH; Israeli Consul General David Siegel; Cantor Herschel Fox (Temple Valley Beth Shalom) singing the "Jewish Partisan's Hymn"; Rabbi Shaye Berkowitz and son Schneur  Berkowitz, 22, of Hancock Park; Rabbi Sharon Brous of Ikar Congregation.