Berkshire Vaccine Collaborative Launches Website

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Berkshire Vaccine Collaborative has announced the launch of a new website containing comprehensive information on how to access the Berkshire area COVID-19 vaccination clinics.

The new site, www.getvaccinatedberkshires.org, was developed to provide a consolidated resource with information about the COVID-19 vaccines, to provide resources on the state's Vaccination Phases and vaccine availability, and to aid the public in making appointments at the three large mass vaccination clinic sites in the Berkshires.

The Berkshire Vaccine Collaborative has established vaccination sites in Pittsfield at the Berkshire Community College Field House, in Great Barrington at the WEB Du Bois Middle School and in North Adams at St. Elizabeth of Hungary's Parish Center. Vaccine clinics are now scheduled for early February to begin vaccinations for the first part of Phase 2, which includes anyone aged 75 and older.

The Berkshire Vaccine Collaborative estimates that there are approximately 18,000 Berkshire residents who are 75 and older, and based on the current distribution of vaccine by the State of Massachusetts, it is likely to take several weeks before completion of Phase 2-A. Clinics will be held weekly based on availability of the vaccine from the Commonwealth.

The website will be updated regularly as more clinics are scheduled throughout February and the coming months and as the state continues to move through Phase 2 and into Phase 3, which is estimated to run through the remainder of winter and into the spring.

The Berkshire Vaccine Collaborative is a partnership between Berkshire Health Systems, Community Health Programs, the Berkshire County Boards of Health Association and public health nurses.

The website is www.getvaccinatedberkshires.org.

Musician Brings Music of Terezin Concentration Camp to Tanglewood

By Alan PetrucelliSpecial to iBerkshires
12:28PM / Monday, July 13, 2026

Mark Ludwig founded the Terezin Music Foundation in 1991. The musician and Holocaust scholar will present at Tanglewood this Saturday. 

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.