60 Minutes - 60 Minutes 12/15

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

In an interview with Sharyn Alfonsi, El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, says his country is not prepared to process and care for asylum seekers -- he promised to accept in a controversial deal with the U.S. Francesco Lotoro has spent 30 years recovering, cataloging and performing music written by prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. Jon Wertheim has his story on this week's "60 Minutes." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully, make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts.

President Trump is very nice and cool, and I'm nice and cool too. In controlling the immigration crisis, the United States doesn't have a more central ally than El Salvador and its 38-year-old president, Nayib Bukele. In the last year, 90,000 Salvadorans were apprehended at the U.S. border. Many were fleeing deadly gang violence. But after Bukele agreed to a controversial asylum deal... El Salvador now has the same safety rating as Denmark and France. Does that sound right to you?

It seems unlikely, even impossible, that music could have been performed and composed at a place like this, site of unspeakable evil, the most horrific mass murder in human history. More than a million men, women, and children died here. For those who passed through this entrance, known as the Gate of Death, these tracks were a path to genocide and terror.

During the Holocaust, an entire generation of talented musicians, composers, and virtuosos perished. 75 years later, Francesco Littoro is breathing life into their work. In some cases, we are in front of masterpieces that could have changed the path of musical language in Europe if they had been written in a free world. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts. The country of El Salvador is small, about the size of New Jersey.

But it plays a big role in the flow of migrants from Central America to the United States. In the last 40 years, one in five Salvadorans has moved here. Half of them are undocumented. In the last year, 90,000 Salvadorans have been apprehended at the U.S. border. Now, a populist president who's infatuated with Twitter is trying to stop that. No, it's not President Trump. It's El Salvador's new president, Nayib Bukele. He's 38 years old. The millennial president's greatest challenge is to get rid of the violent gangs that control much of the country so businesses will come to El Salvador and create jobs so his people don't leave. It's all connected, and none of it's easy to fix.

We were surprised just how blunt President Bukele was about the problems facing El Salvador. The reality is that our whole economy is in shatters. Nothing works. I mean, that's a heck of a thing for a president of a country to say that our whole economy is in shatters and nothing's working. Yes. It's like a huge clock, the old ones with, you know, with the wheels. Interconnected. Yes. So you can fix this one, but this one doesn't work. The problem is that you have to fix all of the pieces of the clock so the clock might work.

Among the few things working with any precision in El Salvador are the deportation flights from the United States, chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and called ICE-AIR. This plane arrived from Texas carrying 104 Salvadorans who entered the United States illegally. It costs American taxpayers $64,000 a flight to send them back. There are as many as five flights to El Salvador a week. We saw the planes coming in with the deportees. And we spoke to some of the young men coming off those planes. And they said, I'm going to take a hot shower and we're going to try again. Yes. Some people, they try four or five times because they feel they have nothing to lose.

But if you ask people that are not coming back in the planes, but just people in the street, most of the people will say, I want to stay in my country. It's not easy. A third live on less than $5.50 a day. Well-paying factory jobs have gone to Asia, and any work that can be found by young people is in low-wage jobs in shops and restaurants.

We have an economy that creates 20,000 jobs in a country that 100,000 kids get into work every year, so 80,000 stay out of the job. I mean, this is a country with a lot, a lot of problems. President Nayib Bukele, whose grandfather immigrated to El Salvador from Jerusalem, took office in June. The ad executive and former mayor of San Salvador campaigned in a leather jacket and blue jeans as an outsider who could pull the country out of crisis. But first, he has to get gang violence under control.

Salvadorans are caught in the middle of a Turk war between the two largest gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18. According to the UN, El Salvador's murder rate is higher than any nation not at war. This is not the same reality that you may face in the United States. But it's the reality here. But it's the reality here. And we have to work with this reality. I mean, we have to be very creative because every day that passes, people die. The gangs also affect the economy by shaking down businesses of all sizes.

It's so widespread, we were told shop owners limit their own profits to avoid becoming targets for extortion. Everybody we spoke to, when we said, who's in control, the government or the gangs? They said both. Both. They have a de facto power, a real one. They charge taxes. They actually say, OK, if you pay this, we'll provide security for your business. They have a quasi-security force. They say this is MS-13 territory and this is 18 revolutionaries' territory.

So they actually have borders between them. To cross one of those borders, we had to wait until our Salvadoran colleague got word that the gangs had given us permission to enter. We were instructed to drive slowly with hazard lights on and windows down so the gangs could see there weren't any rival gang members in our car. We took this leap of faith to go to this church. Its pastor is Nelson Mose. He offers sanctuary to men looking to leave the gangs. According to the code of the streets, the only way out of a gang is to die or become a born-again Christian. I think a lot of people in the United States think the gang started in El Salvador and moved to the United States.

But that's not what happened. The gangs were born in the United States. Here they found gunpowder to set this entire country on fire. It was just incredible how quickly it took off. The birth of gangs that Pastor Moze is describing started in the 1980s, when the first wave of Salvadoran migrants fled the country during its civil war. Some formed gangs in Los Angeles. By the 90s, thousands of them who had broken the law in the U.S.

were deported to El Salvador and brought gang culture with them. The government here was too weak after the civil war to keep them in check. How strong are the conflicts between the two gangs? We've had some difficult moments because right down there at the street is where another gang's territory begins. Down here. We're very close from this street to the next one. Pastor Moze was afraid to take us more than 25 yards from his front door. This is the limit, he said, because even he's not allowed to pass into another gang's territory. It's like a parallel state in some communities. A parallel state? Yes, it's a parallel state.

Would you ever negotiate with them? No. Why not? Well, because you're giving them legitimacy. Instead, Bukele has declared war on the gangs. He's deployed 8,500 troops in a crackdown he calls the Territorial Control Plan. We got a taste of it on a sweep in San Salvador. It felt more like a counterinsurgency than a police patrol.

Residents seemed unfazed as cops looked for weapons or drugs. And any young man that came across their path was examined for gang tattoos. When they do arrest somebody, they're brought to the nearest square. Police told us it's for public shaming. It's dragnets like this who Cayley credits for a steep drop in murders. His government says since he took office, homicides fell from 231 in the month of June to 131 in November. The president gets an alert on his phone every time there's a murder. So I get homicide number one in the day. Then later in the day, homicide number

two. Why do you get those to your phone every day? Why do you want to see that? I don't want to see it. I have to see it because then you can take measures immediately. One measure he's taken is to limit the reach of gang leaders inside El Salvador's prisons. Most prisons looked like this. Leaders had free reign and would routinely use cell phones to direct their empires and order hits. The director of the prison system showed us how they've restored order inside the country's largest prison. First, they confiscated 6,000 cell phones from the 4,000 inmates here. That did not go over well.

They burned this area here that you're looking at two times. They took hostages among the wardens. Because of the phones? Because of the phones, because of power, because of money. All those gray patches you see on the floor, that's where guards dug up hidden phones, guns and explosives. Gang leaders were also separated from everyone else. They are locked up for 23 hours a day behind these heavy green doors. Is crime in your mind the biggest barrier to restoring the economics? Yes, because anything

that you do in trying to attract investment, private investment, international investment, tourism, etc., everything will be stopped by if the perception is that El Salvador is a place that you will go and you will get killed. Bukele is not without skeptics who've seen other Salvadoran presidents get tough on crime only to become inmates themselves for stealing government money and foreign aid. Two of the last four presidents were arrested. Another has fled the country. Since 2016, the U.S. Congress has approved more than $400 million in aid to El Salvador. How do you assure Americans that the money that is coming into your country gets to where it needs to be?

I'm 38 right now. I started being president when I was 37. I don't want to be out. I'm going to be out of the presidency at 42. I really don't want to be in jail at 43, right? So, I mean, I'm not here to steal money. But Bukele relishes in stealing the spotlight, whether it's taking a selfie before a speech at the United Nations, firing government ministers on Twitter, or carefully staging staff meetings for the television cameras. He's also gone out of his way to please President Trump.

President Trump is very nice and cool, and I'm nice and cool too. In September, Bukele agreed to a controversial deal that would allow the U.S. to send asylum seekers from any country to El Salvador. Critics told us it amounts to outsourcing America's asylum system to one of the most violent places in the world. How can you keep asylum seekers safe here if you can't keep the people who live here safe? Yes, actually, this is an agreement that has a lot of ifs, because... What do you mean, ifs? Well, these countries have to be a lot safer, a lot safer. A member of the president's inner circle said that asylum seekers could end up staying in El Salvador, that that could happen. Is El Salvador prepared for that?

Well, not right now. We don't have asylum capacities, but we can build them. But you don't have it now. We don't have it now. And if he said I can throw up a tent. A tent? That's not an asylum capacity. No. So why did he agree to the deal? Bukele can't achieve his goals unless he stays on the good side of the U.S.

It's already paid off. The White House released $51 million of aid it was holding back. And despite all the violence, the State Department lowered the threat level for Americans traveling to El Salvador. It was in the same category as the Congo and Sudan. El Salvador now has the same safety rating as Denmark and France. Does that sound right to you? It also has the same safety rating than Guatemala and Honduras. But you can't walk around freely here as a tourist. I mean, we were told there were certain streets we couldn't walk down unless we got approval from gang members first.

Yes, mostly in gang-dominated communities. I don't think that happens in Denmark. No, of course not. Of course not. No, I'm not comparing El Salvador to Denmark. No. But the exodus from El Salvador has slowed. The Trump administration credits Bukele's efforts and tougher U.S. immigration policies for the drop in the number of Salvadorans trying to enter the U.S., from more than 12,000 in June to 2,500 in October. This is our responsibility to create the conditions where people don't want to flee our country.

We don't have to be Switzerland. We just have to be more similar to Costa Rica or Panama and have our people want to stay there. Because they want to be home. Of course, everybody wants to be home. People would rather stay at their home with little than risk everything to try to find more. The sign above the steel gates of Auschwitz reads,

Arbeit macht frei, work sets you free. It was, of course, a chilling lie, an evil hoax. But there was one surprising source of temporary escape inside the gates, music. Composers and singers and musicians, both world-class and recreational, were among the imprisoned. And what's not widely known is that, under the bleakest conditions imaginable, they performed and wrote music. Lots of it. More than six million people, most of them Jews, died in the Holocaust, but their music did not, thanks in part to the extraordinary work of Francesco Littoro. An Italian composer and pianist, Littoro has spent 30 years recovering, performing,

and in some cases finishing, pieces of work composed in captivity. Nearly 75 years after the camps were liberated, Francesco Littoro is on a remarkable rescue mission, reviving music like this piece created by a young Jewish woman in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944. Piano The miracle is that all of this could have been destroyed, could have been lost, And instead, the miracle is that this music reaches us. Music is a phenomenon which wins. That's the secret of the concentration camps. No one can take it away. No one can imprison it. It seems unlikely, even impossible, that music could have been performed and composed at a place like this, site of unspeakable evil, the most horrific mass murder in human history. This is Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi concentration camp in southern Poland.

Set up by the Germans in 1940 as part of Hitler's final solution, it became the largest center in the world for the extermination of Jews. More than a million men, women, and children died here. For those who passed through this entrance, known as the Gate of Death, these tracks were a path to genocide and terror. After they disembarked from cattle cars, most were sent directly to their deaths in the gas chambers. The sounds of the camp included the screech of train brakes, haunting screams of families separated forever, the staccato orders barked by SS guards,

but also in the air, the sound of music, the language of the gods. This piece, titled Fantasy, was written for oboe and strings, composed by a prisoner in Poland in 1942. At Auschwitz, as at other camps, there were inmate orchestras, set up by the Nazis to play marches and entertain. There was also unofficial music, crafted in secret, a way of preserving some dignity where little otherwise existed. During the Holocaust, an entire generation of talented musicians,

composers, and virtuosos perished. Seventy-five years later, Francesco Latoro is breathing life into their work. In some cases, we are in front of masterpieces that could have changed the path of musical language in Europe if they had been written in a free world. Francesco Latoro's work may culminate in stirring musical performances, but that's just the last measure, so to speak. His rescue missions, largely self-financed, begin the old-fashioned way, with lots of hard work, knocking on doors,

and face-to-face meetings with survivors and their relatives. I've heard that you've searched attics and basements. I imagine sometimes families don't even know the musical treasure they have. There are children who have inherited all the paper material from their dad who survived the camp and stored it. When I recovered it, it was literally infested with paper worms. So before taking it, a cleanup operation was required, a de-infestation.

Latoro grew up and still lives in Barletta, an ancient town on the Adriatic coast of southern Italy. His modest home, which doubles as his office, is stuffed with tapes, audio cassettes, diaries and microfilm. Aided by his wife Grazia, who works at the local post office to support the family, Latoro has collected and cataloged more than 8,000 pieces of music, including symphonies, operas, folk songs, and gypsy tunes scribbled on everything from food wrapping to telegrams, even potato sacks. The prisoner who composed this piece used the charcoal given to him as dysentery medicine and toilet paper to write an entire symphony,

which was later smuggled out in the camp laundry. He's using his dysentery medication as a pen, and he's using toilet paper as paper. And that's how he writes a symphony. When you lost freedom, toilet paper and coal can be freedom. It's a testament to resourcefulness, how far artists will go to create. It's also a testament to the range of emotions that prisoners experience. What kind of music is this?

This is 1944 in Buchenwald in Achaia. This is a march. Latoro isn't just collecting this music, he's arranging it and sometimes finishing these works. Is this completed work or is this only partial? No, here are only the melodies. This tender composition was written by a pole while he was in Buchenwald concentration camp. Latorreau says that if music like this isn't performed, it's as if it's still imprisoned in the camps.

It hasn't been freed. This wasn't an obvious calling for an Italian who was raised Roman Catholic. But from age 15, Latorre says he felt the pull of another religion. You converted to Judaism. You say you have a Jewish soul. Define what that means. There was a rabbi who explained to me that when a person converts to Judaism, in reality he doesn't convert, he goes back to being Jewish. Doing this research is possibly the most Jewish thing that I know.

We Jews have a word which expresses this concept, mitzvah. It's not something that someone tells you you must do. You know as a Jew you you must do. You know, as a Jew, that you must do it. Latoro's quest began in 1988, when he learned about the music created by prisoners in the Czech concentration camp Theresienstadt. The Nazis had set up the camp to fool the world into believing they were treating Jews humanely.

Inmates were allowed to create and stage performances, some of which survive in this Nazi propaganda film. Latorre was amazed by the level of musicianship and wondered what else was out there. He reached out to Brett Werb, music curator at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Werb says Francesco Latorro is building on the legacy of others who have searched for concentration camp music,

but Latorro is taking it to the next level, making the scores performable. Why did people in concentration camps turn to music? It helped people to cope. It helped people to escape. It gave people something to music. It helped people to cope. It helped people to escape. It gave people something to do. It allowed them to comment on the experiences that they were undergoing. Did music save lives during the Holocaust? There's no doubt that being a member of an orchestra increased your chances of survival. Anita Laster-Volfish is one of the last surviving members of the Women's Orchestra at Auschwitz.

She's now 94 years old. We met her at her home in London. What had you heard about the camp before you arrived? We heard everything that was going on there, only we didn't, still tried not to believe it. But by the time I arrived there, in fact, I knew it was a reality, gas chambers. You came prepared for the worst. I came prepared for the worst, yes. Her parents, German Jews, were taken away in 1942, and she never saw them again.

She was just 18 when she arrived at the death camp a year later. We were put in some sort of block and waited all night, and the next morning there was a sort of welcome ceremony and there were lots of people sitting there doing the reception business like tattooing you, taking your hair off, etc. That's all done by prisoners themselves. The numbers are still visible on her left arm. I was led to a girl, also a prisoner, and a sort of normal conversation took place. And then she asked me, what was I doing before the war?

And like an idiot, I don't know, I said, I used to play the cello. She said, that's fantastic. You'll be safe. She said, I had no idea what she's talking about. And that's how you heard there was an orchestra? Yeah. And this is your salvation? That was my salvation, yeah. The conductor of the orchestra was virtuoso violinist Alma Rosé, niece of the famous Viennese composer Gustav Mahler. Anita Lasker-Wolfisch says Rosé, a prisoner herself, had an iron discipline and tried to focus attention away from the profound misery of the camp.

I remember that we were scared stiff of her. She was very much the boss, and she knew very well that if she did not succeed to make a reasonable orchestra there, we wouldn't survive. So it was a tremendous responsibility this poor woman had. The orchestra members all lived together in a wooden barracks like this, in Block 12 at Birkenau, known as the Music Block. We were based very near the crematoria. We could see everything that was going on.

You're practicing your orchestra and you can see everything going on? Yeah. I mean, once you are inside Auschwitz, you knew what was going on, you know. How do you play music pretending to ignore everything going on around you? You arrive in Auschwitz, you're prepared to go to the gas chamber. Somebody puts a cello in your hand and you have a chance of life. Are you going to say, I'm sorry, I don't play here, I play in Carnegie Hall. But, you know, I mean, you know, people have funny ideas about what it's like to arrive in a place where you're going to be killed. What I hear you say is that your ability to play the cello saved your life.

Yeah. Simple as that. The main function of the camp orchestra is playing marches for prisoners every day here at the main gate. A way, literally, to set the tempo for a day of work. And a way to count the inmates. Right here is where the men's orchestra played. Yes, it was like a procession, and the orchestra played there. The orchestras also played when new arrivals disembarked from trains at Birkenau, to give a sense of normalcy, tricking newcomers into thinking it was a hospitable place. This when at the height of the killings, Nazis were murdering thousands of men, women, and children each day.

Evidence of the scope and scale of the atrocity still exists here. Mountains of shoes, suitcases, glasses, shaving brushes, murder on an industrial scale. Auschwitz archivists showed us some of the instruments that were taken out of the camp by orchestra members at the end of the war and later donated to the museum. This clarinet, a violin, and an accordion, as well as some of the music they played. This is the prisoners' orchestra of the concentration camp Auschwitz. Yes. And this is the inventory of instruments?

Yes. What is inside? The orchestras also gave concerts on Sundays for prisoners and for SS officers. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch remembers playing for the infamous Dr. Joseph Mengele, known as the Angel of Death. Mengele conducted medical experiments on prisoners. His notorious infirmary still stands just steps from the railroad tracks in Birkenau. What was interesting is that these people, these arch criminals, were not uneducated people. That this monstrous man could still appreciate Schumann? Yeah.

How do you reconcile that? I don't. Francesco Latoro took us to another location where the Auschwitz camp orchestra played for Nazi officers and their families. It's just feet from the crematorium and within sight of the house of Camp Commandant Rudolf Hess. You were saying sometimes the smoke from the crematorium was so thick the musicians couldn't even see the notes in front of them.

Yes, it happened. It happened. And it's tragic. Life and death were together. Life and death are intermingling. And the point of connection of life and death were together. Life and death are intermingling. And the point of connection of life and death is music. This is all we have about life in the camp. Life disappeared. We have only music.

For me, music is the life that remained. Music may be the life that remained, music like this 1942 piece titled Fantasy. But it is the people behind the music that animate Francesco Littoro's long and ambitious project. Their compositions created at a time when fundamental values were in danger. Today, as the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, it's more often their descendants

Latorre tracks down. When we come back, musical genius brought to life decades after death. For 30 years, Italian composer and pianist Francesco Latorro has been on an all-consuming quest to collect music created by prisoners during the Holocaust. As he travels the world, mostly on his own dime, he is both a detective and an archaeologist, digging through the past to recover and discover actual artifacts. But maybe even more important, he meets with survivors and their family members to excavate the stories behind the music. We travel to Nuremberg, Germany to meet Waldemar Kropinski. He is the son of Joseph Kropinski,

perhaps the most prolific and versatile composer in the entire camp constellation. Waldemar Kropinski says his father's work was totally unknown before Francesco Littoro brought it to light. I thought it was something that was of no interest to anyone because my father was already dead and not even one camp composition of his was performed in Poland. Joseph Kropinski, a Roman Catholic, was 26 when he was caught working for the Polish resistance and sent to Auschwitz,

where he became first violinist in the men's orchestra and started secretly composing, first for himself and then for other prisoners. In 1942, he wrote this piece that he titled Resignation. This is the list my father did seven months before his death. Oh, this is all of his music. Kropinski wrote hundreds of pieces of music during his four years of imprisonment, at Auschwitz and later at Buchenwald, including tangos, waltzes, love songs, even an opera in two parts.

Still more astonishing, he composed most of them at night by candlelight. In this tiny room, the Nazis diabolically called a pathology lab, where during the day bodies were dismembered. Other prisoners had secured the space for Kropinski so he could have a quiet place to compose. This is where he worked. This is the pathology room where the cadavers mounted and he wrote music. Yes. Paper was in short supply, so Kropinski wrote music on items like this stolen Nazi requisition form. Because on the other side you had clean paper, and my father could write notes. What is the name of this piece? A set of Christmas songs for a string quartet.

That's right. A few feet from piles of dead bodies, Joseph Kropinski wrote a suite of holiday songs. Waldemar says his father did it all to help raise the spirits of his fellow prisoners. His music was really touching hearts and very positive. It was important that the prisoners could hear something else in this time, something touching, so that they could go back in their memory to the old times and feel encouraged. In April 1945, as the Allies approached Buchenwald, the camp was evacuated and inmates were forced on a death march.

Kropinski was able to smuggle out his violin and hundreds of pieces of music, some hidden in his violin case and others in a secret coat pocket. But only 117 survived today. On the march, he sacrificed the rest to build a fire for his fellow prisoners. You're saying your father took paper on which he had written compositions and used that to start a fire to give people heat to save their lives? Yes, not only his life, but the lives of others. Francesco Latoro says Kropinski, like so many other musicians, hasn't gotten the recognition he deserves. He was a man who obviously suffered a lot in the camps,

but made himself available to others, creating music. He was a man who must be understood not only as a musician, but as someone who created solidarity, created unison in the camps. When did you first come into contact with Francesco Latoro? Francesco Latoro called me, and he told me that he heard about my father, that he heard about his mission, about his music.

I couldn't believe my ears. So I immediately wanted to meet him. We wanted to see what one of Latoro's recovery missions looked like in practice. So we went along with him to the medieval city of Kraków, one of the oldest towns in southern Poland, to meet Krzysztof Kuliszewicz. Oh! Francesco, are you again in Kraków?

Krzysztof is the son of Alexander Kuliszewicz, a Pole imprisoned by the Gestapo for anti-fascist writings and deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1939. You see, this is, for instance, the original. No. During more than five years of imprisonment, Kuleshevich became something of a camp troubadour, hoping inmates cope with their hunger and despair

and performing songs like this at secret gatherings. But he didn't just compose and sing. He also used his extraordinary powers of recall, memorizing hundreds of songs by other prisoners, which he dictated to a nurse after the war so they could be recorded. I'll be from the Birka now, yes. CHOIR SINGS to be a form of oral history. Not just giving hope to his fellow inmates, but laying bare the truth of what was happening inside the camp. He always said, I am living for those who died.

They can't sing, they can't talk, but I can. It sounds like music was a way to find just a slice of dignity, of humanity amid all this horrible stuff. Exactly. This is what my father used to say, the slice of dignity. He said, as long as you can sing and compose and you keep it in your mind, and the SS officer doesn't know what you keep in your mind, you are free. What was it like for you the first time you heard your father's work sort of brought out of the shadows by Francesco Latoro and performed? What was that like? It was amazing. It was amazing because I never thought that it would come live again.

And now it was like the voice of my father coming back as a real music again. So he was, you know, living again for me. Waldemar Kropinski can relate to the joy of finally hearing his father's music performed. It was a very personal feeling. Even today, although I know these pieces, I go back and listen to them often. And every time I hear them, I cry. To date, Francesco Latoro has arranged and recorded 400 works composed in the camps,

including those by Aleksandr Kuleshevich and Joseph Kropinski. In this piece, by a Jewish musician in Theresienstadt. This spring, Latoro will perform some of them at a concert to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camps. What happened in the camps is more than an artistic phenomenon. We have to think of this music as a last testament. We have to perform this music like Beethoven, Mahler, Schumann. This musician for me wanted only one desire, that this music can be performed.

Latoro is building what he calls a citadel in his hometown of Barletta. Thanks to a grant from the Italian government, in February he plans to break ground at this abandoned distillery. A campus for the study of concentrationary music, it will include a library, a museum, a theater, and will house more than 10,000 items Latoro has collected. The real beneficiaries of this music aren't us who are researching it, not this generation. The generation that will benefit from it, that will enjoy this music, is the generation of those who will come in 30 or 40 years.

It's an operation which is completely for the future. He's continuing to raise funds from the public in hopes to complete the project in four years. You've described what you're doing as a mitzvah, this Jewish term for good deed. I think a lot of people would say what you're doing goes well beyond a good deed. I don't know. Maybe I am doing a good thing. When I complete this research, we'll talk about it again. And then we'll see if we truly did more than doing a good thing. For the time being, I only see all of this as expensive, difficult, at times discouraging.

But it has to be done until the end. Like a musician who benefits from word of mouth, Francesco Latoro and his remarkable work are starting to build a worldwide fan base. Just last month alone, he performed in Toronto, Jerusalem, and at this concert hall in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And that's where we end

our story tonight, as Francesco Latoro brings to life the music he has rescued. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Now an update on a story we first reported last February called the Chibok Girls. In Nigeria, we met a group of young women who had been kidnapped, held captive, and abused for years by the terrorist group Boko Haram. After being freed, they were continuing their education and therapy at a special school designed for them at the American University of Nigeria. One of the students was Grace Dauda, whose leg was severely broken when she was kidnapped. A few weeks ago, Grace and her fellow student Rebecca Malam arrived in New York for specialized medical care for their injuries. Tell me a little bit about the pain that you have.

Where do you feel pain? Grace had orthopedic surgery this past Wednesday, which doctors hope will help her walk again without a cane. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs.

Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts.