Composer. A brilliant young artist whose music was created in the shadow of the Holocaust. Klein was born in Prerov, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) into a Jewish family, and began piano lessons at age 11. His performing debut at 16 was well-received and he was on the threshold of a promising career when Hitler's armies entered Prague in March 1939. Forced to discontinue his studies at Prague University and forbidden to perform in public, he initially flouted the Nuremburg Laws by playing concerts under the pseudonym Karel Vranek, and when this grew too dangerous he resorted to clandestine recitals in private homes. News of Klein's gifts had already spread beyond Czechoslovakia and in 1940 he was offered a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London, but the Nazis denied him permission to leave the country. Around this time he wrote his earliest notable compositions: the Divertimento for Eight Wind Instruments (1940), "Three Songs for High Voice and Piano" (1940), and a String Quartet (1941). In December 1941 he was transferred from the Prague ghetto to the new concentration camp at Theresienstadt (Terezin), which had been set up to fool the international community into believing it was a typical "Jewish resettlement". Many artists and intellectuals were interned there, and despite very harsh conditions a precarious but lively cultural scene was allowed to flourish. Klein immediately became a central figure in Theresienstadt's musical life. He organized concerts and chamber ensembles, played and taught piano, gave lectures, and took up conducting, all with an indefatigable enthusiasm that raised the spirits of his fellow prisoners. He also managed to compose, often on available scraps of paper; in this manner he produced his fine Piano Sonata (1943), the Fantasy and Fugue for String Quartet (1943), the cantata "The First Sin" (1942), and two "Madrigals" for vocal quintet. These works do not overtly comment on the plight of his people but their existence alone was an act of defiance, and a tribute to the strength of Klein's creative drive. In the early Fall of 1944, when it became clear that the inmate population of Theresienstadt was to be liquidated, Klein arranged to have his manuscripts smuggled out of the camp and worked feverishly on his masterpiece, the amazingly spirited and life-affirming String Trio. It was completed in October, nine days before he was sent to Auschwitz. Because of his youth he was spared the gas chambers and instead marched off to Furstengrube, a forced labor complex in Upper Silesia. Two months later he was killed by the SS during the camp's evacuation, just as the Red Army was about to liberate the area. He was 25. In 1946 Klein's sister arranged to have his handful of works performed in Prague and from there they slowly made their way through Europe's concert halls; most have since been published and recorded. A cache of his juvenilia, including a string quartet, was discovered in 1990. Klein's most characteristic music blended the serialism of Schoenberg and Berg with the lyrical directness of Janacek and the spirit of Moravian folk tunes. His style was not fully developed but it was remarkably mature in technique and expression. Famed conductor Karel Ancerl (a Theresienstadt colleague) later said of him: "It is difficult to say how and to what dimensions Gideon Klein would have grown under normal circumstances. One can say with certainty that he could have been among the best, achieving the utmost perfection as a pianist, composer and conductor".