PLANNED CONCERT GETS POLITICAL

More than half a century after he was liberated from Mauthausen concentration camp in Upper Austria, Leon Zelman, a Polish-born Jew, has organized a memorial concert for the 100,000 people who were killed in the camp.

At the camp on Sunday, some 110 miles west of the Austrian capital, the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra will perform Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, with its "Ode to Joy" choral climax. Britain's Sir Simon Rattle will conduct.

Zelman, 72, was 17 years old when U.S. troops liberated him from Mauthausen in May 1945.

Zelman says he wants to hear the words "all mankind become brothers" (from the triumphant ode) resound across the quarry in honor of the innocent victims murdered by one of history's most diabolical regimes. "This music should grab people," Zelman said. "I want people to remember and to bow down before the dead."

An event intended to celebrate a new Europe of shared democratic values has, however, been overshadowed by Austrian politics and protests against the Vienna Philharmonic's customary exclusion of women and people of color from its ranks.