“Children of Willesden Lane” show about Kindertransport coming to Birmingham

Concert pianist and Grammy nominee Mona Golabek will return to Alabama to present “The Children of Willesden Lane,” a musical view into her mother’s escape from Nazi Germany.

The performance is based on her book “The Children of Willesden Lane,” the story of her mother, Lisa Jura, who was sent from Vienna on the Kindertransport, a project to save Jewish children in Germany and Austria by bringing them to England, in 1938. She was a 14-year-old pianist when she left for England, arriving at a home for refugee children on Willesden Lane in London, far from her original dream of performing at Musikverein concert hall.

Sponsored by Jewish and non-Jewish families, about 10,000 children — three-quarters of them Jewish — were saved through the Kindertransport. Most of their parents did not survive the Holocaust.

Lisa Jura used her music to help her survive and that music was passed down to her children, as well as telling her story through that passionate music. Golabek’s concerts are based on her mother’s music.

“I was so overwhelmed by the love my grandmother showed in sending her daughter away, losing her forever to save her, that I vowed to share this story with the world,” Golabek said.

Golabek’s father received the Croix de Guerre for his role in the French Resistance. She is a Grammy nominee who has been the subject of several documentaries, including “Concerto for Mona” with conductor Zubin Mehta. Her productions include the best-selling “Carnival of the Animals” and Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite,” both recorded with her sister Renee, and featuring the voices of Meryl Streep, Audrey Hepburn, Ted Danson and Lily Tomlin.

Golabek founded Hold On To Your Music, a foundation devoted to spreading the message of the power of music. With the help of the Milken Family Foundation, Facing History and Ourselves, and the Annenberg Foundation, she created educational resources which, with her book, have been adopted into school curricula across America. Additional educational partnerships have been formed with the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, Mashplant and the USC Shoah Foundation to tell her mother’s story.

In April 2024 she gave several performances in Montgomery, having previously performed there in 2011 and 2012, and performed in Birmingham’s annual commemoration in April 2014. She also visited New Orleans in 2019.

Coordinated by the Alabama Holocaust Education Center, she will have a community program at the Wright Center at Samford University in Birmingham on April 7 at 6:30 p.m., and a student field trip at 10 a.m. Tickets are $18. A performance previously scheduled for Mobile on April 9 has been cancelled.