Holocaust survivor returns favor to MIT’s music library

“It was quite an accomplishment,” said Gruenbaum, now 80 years old and living in Brookline. “I don’t understand at all how I did it.”

This summer, almost 60 years after graduating from MIT with a degree in civil engineering, Gruenbaum has found a way to return the favor to the library and his alma mater while also memorializing his parents.

Using money he is receiving from the German government as reparation for the time he spent in the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia during World War II, Gruenbaum has established a fund at MIT’s music library to purchase recordings, writings, sheet music, and other materials by Jewish musicians.

The Dr. Karl and Mrs. Margaret Grünbaum Fund for Jewish Music History is the first of its kind for the library, said MIT’s music librarian, Peter Munstedt.

Gruenbaum did not wish to disclose the amount of his donation using the reparation funding, which is commonly referred to as a “ghetto pension” in reference to the Nazi government’s treatment of Jews.

Munstedt said the fund has already been used to boost the library’s collection of Jewish musicians by adding works by composer Felix Mendelssohn, conductor Leonard Bernstein, and violinist Itzhak Perlman.

“It really fits in well with a lot of the music that is being taught here,” Munstedt, of Needham, said of the fund’s acquisitions. “We can buy things we couldn’t ordinarily buy.”

Gruenbaum said he decided to create a memorial to his parents at his alma mater after receiving word in November that he would be receiving a payment from Germany. He then contacted MIT about his intention, and the school helped him decide on the Jewish music fund for the library as a fitting tribute.

Gruenbaum’s father was a lawyer in Czechoslovakia who was arrested and killed by the Nazi Gestapo in 1941 after he helped a wealthy family save their fortune by moving it to England. Shortly thereafter, Gruenbaum along with his mother and sister, Marietta, were sent to the Terezin camp, where they narrowly escaped being sent to the extermination camp for Jews at Auschwitz.