Joseph Schmidt Dies

On this day, the tenor Joseph Schmidt died near the Girenbad internment camp in the canton of Zurich. He was 38. The Swiss National Museum records that camp authorities had sent him to a Zurich hospital and that a doctor returned him to Girenbad. He died on 16 November 1942 in the parlour of the Restaurant Waldegg.

Schmidt was born on 4 March 1904 in Davideny, in Bukovina, and became a well-known singer in German-language film and radio. Nazi rule shut Jewish performers out of German stages. Swiss authorities interned him at Girenbad in October 1942. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery at Unterer Friesenberg in Zurich.