Orchestra Conductor. An inspirational figure of the Holocaust, he was born in Romania into a Jewish family. He studied music in Brno, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) and began his professional career as a pianist and chorus master at theatres in Prague. In 1937 he founded the Prague Chamber Opera in a pioneering attempt to revive the forgotten Baroque repertory. The Nazis shut down his company two years later and in November 1941 he was among the first prisoners sent to the new concentration camp at Theresienstadt, a destination for many leading Jewish artists in Hitler-dominated Europe. Schaechter immediately became a driving force in the establishment of the camp's Freizeitgestaltung ("Administration of Free Time Activities"), in which the inmates were allowed to develop a vigorous cultural scene despite hunger, disease, and the constant presence of death. He took charge of the Opera and Vocal Music Department, building a theatre ensemble from scratch, commissioning works and encouraging musicians to take part in his programs. Through preserverence and at no little risk to himself, he persuaded the commandant to have instruments and sheet music brought into the camp, dramatically improving the quality and scope of music-making there. Apart from many choral concerts, he was able to stage such operas as Smetana's "The Bartered Bride" and "The Kiss", Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" and "The Magic Flute", Bizet's "Carmen", Pergolesi's "La Serva Padrona", and his biggest hit, Hans Krasa's fairy tale for children, "Brundibar". His most arduous undertaking was putting on Verdi's Requiem with four soloists and a chorus of 150, with only one score and a legless piano (played by Gideon Klein) at his disposal. He had to rebuild his choir three times after many of the vocalists were sent to death camps in the east. The SS cynically sniggered at the thought of Jews singing a Catholic Requiem for themselves, but for Schaechter this was an act of defiance: through Verdi's music, the oppressed inmates were warning the Nazis of their own final judgement. He conducted 15 performances of the work up to September 1944, when mass deportations of inmates to Auschwitz began. On October 16, a transport carried off Schaechter and the rest of the Freizeitgestaltung musical leadership; he died in the gas chambers two days later. Theresienstadt survivors remembered him as "a rock of a man" whose dedication to art provided an oasis of humanity in a barbaric setting, and helped give them the will to live. It is largely thanks to him that we have the late music of such gifted composers as Klein, Krasa, Pavel Haas, and Viktor Ullmann, also victims of the genocide. A performance piece dedicated to Schaechter's memory, "Defiant Requiem" (2002), incorporates a live rendition of Verdi's masterpiece with documentary footage and interviews about the conductor's heroic efforts at Theresienstadt. It has been played throughout the US and Europe.