When harmonica legend Lee Oskar was seven years old and about to enter a new school, his mother gave him a stern warning. “‘If anybody asks what school you’re in, say it’s a religious school,’” Oskar recalled. “Never say ‘Jewish school’. There was always this intense fear about telling anyone I was Jewish.”
Her warning came in 1955, a full decade after the defeat of the Nazis, when Oskar’s family was living in Copenhagen, one of the most accepting cities in Europe. But, as the musician says, “that didn’t matter. The fear never goes away.”
