Gerle, Robert

Robert Gerle (1924-2005) was a noted concert violinist, conductor, and professor based in the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore metropolitan areas during the last thirty years of his career. Born in Abbazia, Italy, now Opatija, Croatia, of Hungarian parents, Gerle began study of the violin at a young age, graduating from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and the Hungarian National Conservatory of Music. In 1942 he won the Hubay prize for violin performance.

During World War II, Gerle, who was from a Jewish family, spent several years in a labor camp in Budapest. With the approach of the Soviets, he escaped in late 1944, only to be found by Soviet soldiers in January 1945 hiding with 26 other Hungarian Jews in a crawl space over a music professor's apartment. An article published in the New York Times in 1958, recounts the story of the ensuing interaction. The Soviets suspected the group of Hungarians of firing on them and lined them up in front of a firing squad. Apparently on a whim the officer in charge, noting the violin case in Gerle's hand asked him to play a work by Tschaikovsky. The violinist's performance was sufficient to convince the officer that Gerle was a musician, not a soldier. All 26 men were released.

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