Video Premiere: “El Maleh Rachamim” Performed by Dmitry Braumonas

The vocal version of the composition by Baruch Berliner, Nachum Slutzker, and Sergey Krutsenko (RIP) has been recorded by Russian actor Dmitry Braumonas for the Holocaust remembrance project www.elmalehrachamim.com.

An active contributor to various film and theater projects, Mr. Braumonas is an actor with the “SLOVO” Educational Theater in Kaliningrad.

The composition “El Maleh Rachamim” accompanies the film The Address on the Wall, which recounts the World War II tragedy at Babi Yar.

The video was filmed in the town of Yantarny (formerly Palmnicken), where in late January 1945, the Nazi regime murdered the surviving Jewish prisoners in an effort to conceal its crimes.
The prisoners were forced to march first to Königsberg and then onward to Palmnicken, where a mass execution had been planned. Fewer than 4,000 people reached Palmnicken—over 2,000 were killed or died along the way from starvation and exposure. On January 31, 1945, they were executed on the shore of the Baltic Sea. This harrowing episode of the Holocaust became known as the Death March.

At the site of the Palmnicken tragedy, a monument and memorial honoring the victims of the Death March were erected through the efforts of the Jewish community and Kaliningrad businessman Vladimir Katzman. The monument was created by internationally renowned sculptor Frank Meisler, who had designed several memorials dedicated to Holocaust victims. The memorial in Yantarny takes the form of women’s hands reaching through the frozen earth toward the sky, pleading for help. The monument bears engraved identification numbers—authentic numbers once assigned by the Nazis to the prisoners who perished there.

Russian text by Evgeniy Atsapkin
Arrangement, guitar, and bass by Evgeny Atsapkin
Choral part by “Blagovest” Sacred Music Ensemble
Video shooting and editing by Mikhail Ilkevich
Produced by Nachum Slutzker

You can learn more about the Holocaust remembrance project—and even participate by performing your own version of the composition—at www.elmalehrachamim.com, a website created specifically for this initiative. The piece has been arranged not only as a vocal work, but also for violin, cello, piano, guitar, and other instruments, as well as for string and symphony orchestra.