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Onstage at last Thursday, cellist and writer Janet Horvath, MFA, shared several lifetimes’ worth of reflection.

During her remarks as 2025 Goodman Lecturer and a Q&A that followed, Horvath dove into the impact of trauma on Holocaust survivors, their children, and their children’s children, spelling out the ripple effect on each subsequent generation. She related the arc of her parents’ lives before, during, and after Nazi-occupied Hungary, weaving in pivotal memories of her own childhood and career as associate principal cello of Minnesota Orchestra from 1980 to 2012. Throughout the evening she interspersed spoken word with archival and personal photographs, video recordings of her playing, and excerpts from her book The Cello Still Sings: A Generational Story of the Holocaust and of the Transformative Power of Music.

Horvath learned about her parents’ history as Holocaust survivors in 2009, when a casual question to her father led her to discover that he performed with famed conductor Leonard Bernstein in morale-boosting concerts in the displaced persons camps of Bavaria, Germany. Now elderly, Horvath’s father George painstakingly wrote a testimony of his life during World War II as a slave-laborer in the copper mines of Bor, Yugoslavia. In time, Horvath was able to record her mother Katherine’s story of surviving Nazi occupation, starving and hiding in deserted tunnels and bombed buildings. Once they were able to immigrate to Canada, Katherine became a piano teacher and George became a professional cellist, joining the Toronto Symphony. Both buried their deep trauma and attempted to heal others through their love of music.

These stories, new to Horvath, brought her relationship with her parents into a fresh light. “My mother’s overprotectiveness makes sense now,” Horvath recalled thinking of memories such as the calls she had to make to them, even as an adult, whenever she arrived safely during travels.

Before learning the details about their survival of the Holocaust, “I perceived a deep wound only my impeccable behavior could salve,” said Horvath. “As the living, breathing embodiment of survival, I tried not to cause them further pain, resolved to become what they couldn’t be, attempted to make up for their losses, and fulfill their dreams. As the years passed it became more and more difficult to live up to expectations. I had become an accomplished professional musician, married well, had a beautiful son — but I had left them by moving away. Life had become a perpetual farewell.” This complex and difficult intergenerational dynamic is common with the children of trauma survivors, Horvath says. 

Writing The Cello Still Sings was a means of connection for Horvath in several ways — to her parents’ past as she unraveled it, to others in the midst of increasing cultural polarization. She intentionally wrote the book through the lens of a mystery, incorporating humor, Hungarian food recipes, and coming-of-age stories to make her message accessible across ages and backgrounds. With the book, she said, she aimed to “create empathy” and to engage in conversation around divisiveness, anti-semitism, and racism, particularly around refugee crises continuing to occur. She cited tikkun olam, a central tenet of Judaism that means “repairing the word.”

“Judaism emphasizes our responsibility to improve the world through social action, ethical living, and individual acts of kindness and charity,” she said. “There’s such a need for connection. Individualism is our nemesis, I think, right now. We should strive to coexist, to connect, and we can make a difference one conversation at a time. Through music, our family found a way for our hearts to speak and to bring people together. I believe that perhaps the arts can inspire harmony.”

In spring 2018, Horvath was invited to play in a concert commemorating the 70th anniversary of the historic 1948 concert that her father played with Bernstein in the Landsberg, Germany displaced persons camp. She was asked to perform Kol Nidre, the piece that is sung, chanted, or played in synagogues everywhere to introduce the holy day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. During her childhood, her father had played this traditional piece each year in Toronto’s Temple Sinai, and as an adult Horvath herself performed it each year for 30 years in the Twin Cities.

“After all the research and writing, the story comes full circle,” Horvath said. “Between the two of us, we played that piece for more than 60 years.” The story, ending in Landsberg, was a beautiful reconciliatory event — a triumph of music’s power to bring people of different cultures and faiths together.

��ɫӰ�� the Goodman Lecture

Founded by Arthur and Constance Goodman in 1979, the Goodman Lecture promotes interfaith dialogue between Jewish and Christian communities. ��ɫӰ�� is extremely grateful for the Goodmans’ generosity and the continued support of their daughters Mary Ann Goodman Reilly ’61 and Stephanie Goodman ’83, both St. Kate’s graduates.

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Photos by Patrick Clancy