film: Jazzman's life in Russia is a story of courage
John Kennedy, Associate Staff Writer

"In 1939, it didn't help being a Jew playing Negro music, even if your name was Adolf," jokes Eddie Rosner in Jazzman from the Gulag, a documentary film screened at Vancouver's 13th Annual Jewish Film Festival.

Jazzman, set mainly against the unfolding events of WWII, examines Rosner's legendary life to the height of his career as the premier jazz performer in Europe at that time.

Born Adolf Rosner, the man considered by some to be one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century, is known mostly for having been king of le jazz hot in Stalin's Russia. He placed second to Louis Armstrong in an American jazz competition and was nicknamed the "White Armstrong" by bad, old Louis himself.

Born in Berlin in 1910, Eddie Rosner was the son of Jewish-Polish immigrants. Eddie was a child prodigy on the violin and at the age of 18, he left Berlin's stodgy Music Academy and a promising career in classical music to pursue his love of jazz. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Rosner, then a prominent jazz trumpeter, was on a European tour with his band, the Weintraubs Syncopators.

Not to return to his homeland for another forty years, Rosner began on a long journey east. Landing in Warsaw in 1939, Rosner soon headed a wildly popular jazz orchestra and married the daughter of famous Polish actress, Ida Kaminska.

Not long after, the two fled further east to Bialystok, freshly liberated by the Red Army.

Once in the Soviet Union, Rosner's career rose to unprecedented heights. Thanks to mad jazz fans in the higher ranks of Stalin's army, Rosner found himself one of the biggest names in the union. At one point, the documentary tells of a time when Rosner was brought alone into an empty hall and told to play. Not seeing a single person seated in the massive hall, Rosner played a whole show. He was later told that Yosef Stalin himself had been watching from the balcony.

Thanks to huge fans in high places, Rosner and his band were some hot stuff in Moscow for several years.

As the director of Stalin's jazz orchestra, Rosner was so well-respected that he and his musicians were given a train and dispatched all over Russia to perform for soldiers.

"My trumpet was in the front line against fascism," recounts Rosner in a voice-over read by British actor Geoffrey Bateman.

Following several years of touring Russia, Rosner built a huge following during the war, raising jazz's profile in Russia and blossoming into a major celebrity.

For the second time in Rosner's life, however, a fascist dictator got in the way of the man and his music.

Due to his own success and the logic of Stalin's regime, Rosner was declared, a "peddler of depraved Western music" and an "enemy of the state" in late 1946. A few months later, he was sentenced to 10 years in a Siberian labour camp for treason.

Unsurprisingly however, Rosner's reputation followed him, and the camp commander soon ordered him to assemble a band.

The power of Rosner's music, perhaps the purest expression of art, emotion and humanity in the Siberian Gulag, made life somewhat bearable for his fellow inmates.

Stalin's death on Purim (a major Jewish holiday which celebrates overcoming oppression) in 1953, meant freedom for Rosner. He returned to Moscow and his music, moved to Germany in 1973, and eventually died in 1976. Interviews with Rosner's daughter, contemporaries, and friends made for a standard and informative documentary.

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