LENOX, Mass. — One day in 1988, while rummaging through a used book shop in New York City, Mark Ludwig found a biography of 20th-century German rabbi and scholar Leo Baeck. Something caught Ludwig's eye: Baeck, who had survived imprisonment at the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, noted that despite the inhumane conditions, inmates produced an impressive and important output of music.

 

Ludwig, who at the time was a tenured violist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, decided to explore the history of music written (and performed) during the Holocaust.

 

The next time he was in Europe, Ludwig stopped at an archive in Prague, where he was given sheet music written by Terezin inmate Gideon Klein, who had been murdered by the Nazis at 25.

 

"I opened the score and started playing it in my mind's ear," recalls Ludwig. "And the beauty of it was astounding. It opened up a whole new world to me in terms of music."

 

The obsession continues. A car accident stopped Ludwig's career with the BSO, so he devoted his time to Terezin, about 30 miles from Prague.

 

"One door closed, another door opened," said the Boston resident who is founder and executive director of the Terezin Music Foundation. 

 

On July 18, he hosts "I am Alive Because of Music," his fifth presentation at Tanglewood featuring live music from Terezin and World War II. Here, we speak to the Holocaust scholar, who also teaches Jewish Studies at Boston University.