Adam Sztromberg (1879–1942)

Adam (Abram) Sztromberg was a Warsaw-born clarinetist, violinist, accordionist, conductor, and composer whose career spanned the concert hall, the early Polish recording industry, and radio. For three decades he was a fixture of Warsaw's musical life: a player in the orchestra of the Teatr Wielki (Grand Theatre), a professor at the city's Fryderyk Chopin music academy, and one of the most active conductors in the country's gramophone business, where he specialized in folk-style dance music. In the late 1930s, as antisemitism became more open in Poland, he began publishing and performing under the Polish-sounding pseudonym Adam Góra. After the German occupation he was confined to the Warsaw Ghetto, where he played in the streets and then in the ghetto's symphony orchestra. He is believed to have been killed during the mass deportation of Warsaw's Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp in the summer of 1942.

Sztromberg was born in Warsaw in 1879. His full given name was Abram; he performed and composed as Adam. Trained as both a violinist and a clarinetist, he spent many years in the orchestra of the Teatr Wielki, Warsaw's opera house, playing clarinet there until 1939, and he taught at the Higher School of Music named for Fryderyk Chopin in the same city.

His more public reputation, though, came from records. From 1908 he was closely associated with Syrena Record, the first Polish recording company, working with the firm from around its founding and conducting its orchestra. He became one of the conductors most heavily involved in the recording industry, and for several years he headed Syrena Record's folk-music department, overseeing recordings in that genre by various orchestras and soloists. During the interwar years he made a large number of recordings of folk dance music with the Syrena Record village orchestra, a group also referred to as the "peasant" or "folk" orchestra. He led similar folk bands for other labels as well, including Odeon, Columbia, and Lonora, and he appeared frequently on Polish Radio's music programs, where in the 1930s he performed with a folk ensemble of his own.

As a composer he wrote a great deal of popular and dance music. He was, in the words of the Polish Song Library, "the leading author of numerous folk-style pieces, mostly cheerful and upbeat in nature," and he also produced short literary works. His catalogue of dances survives under the name Adam Stromberg and includes obereks, waltzes, polkas, a kujawiak and a sztajerek — pieces such as the waltzes Kukułeczka (1933) and Kwitną bzy (1937), the polka Polka Góry (also titled "Polka Sztromberga"), and Złoty Walc (1934). Several were written with the lyricist Kazimierz Brzeski. It was toward the end of the 1930s, faced with increasingly frequent displays of antisemitism, that he adopted the pseudonym Adam Góra.

After Germany occupied Poland, Sztromberg was confined to the Warsaw Ghetto. According to the Polish Song Library, he "initially played on the streets, but later joined a symphony orchestra operating in the ghetto and giving concerts."

That ensemble, the Jewish Symphony Orchestra, was formally established in early 1941, though symphonic concerts had already been held during 1940 at a number of ghetto venues, including the Judaic Library at 5 Tłomackie Street, the Melody Palace at 12 Rymarska Street, the hall at 16 Sienna Street, the Scala Theatre on Dzielna Street, and the Gospoda hall at 6 Orla Street. The longest-running series of concerts took place at the Femina Theatre on Leszno Street, and performances were occasionally staged at the Community Hall on Grzybowska Street and at the Janusz Korczak orphanage. At its peak the orchestra numbered around 80 musicians, most of them drawn from the ranks of the Warsaw Philharmonic. Its symphonic concerts were led by the conductors Adam Furmański, Marian Neuteich, Szymon Pullman, and Izrael Hammerman.

Sztromberg — listed among the players under the name Abram Stromberg — was one of a large body of professional musicians in the orchestra. His fellow members included Józef Bakman, Wacław Baruch, Ludwik Holcman, Arnold Kirschbraun, Kazimierz Szpilman, Edgar Aftergut, Salomon Frydman, Jerzy Tonkenbaum, Wolf Lidauer, Jakub Messer, Daniel Krakowski, Ludwik Sznicer, Artur Flatau, Henryk Fiszman, Mosze Girguski, Józef Łabuszyński, Izydor Lewak, Henryk Waghalter, Czesław Bem, Natan Sznicler, Bernard Lewinsohn, Ignacy Mitelman, Jerzy Mitman, Zygmunt Lederman, Jakub Szulc, Józef Majerowicz, Rafał Broches, Józef Waghalter, and Samuel Weinroth. Reviews of the concerts appeared in the Jewish Gazette (Gazeta Żydowska), the Polish-language paper published in the ghetto.

In 1940 Sztromberg himself appeared as a soloist, singing the solo part in Jewish Sketches (Szkice żydowskie) by the composer Lejb (Leo) Cejtlin. The orchestra's activity was brought to an end in 1942: the last symphonic concert took place on 12 April 1942, when the violinist Henryk Reinberg performed Karol Szymanowski's The Fountain of Arethusa.

The exact circumstances of his death are not documented, but the sources agree on the period. He is thought to have perished during the great deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka, which began in the summer of 1942; the Virtual Shtetl biography records his death as July 1942, with August given as an alternative, and states plainly that he "died a victim of Nazism." He was 63.

Music and the Holocaust, July 2026

Sources

Błaszczyk, L.T. Żydzi w kulturze muzycznej ziem polskich w XIX i XX wieku: Słownik biograficzny [Jews in the Musical Culture of Polish Lands in the 19th and 20th Centuries: A Biographical Dictionary]. Warsaw, 2014.

Engelking, B., and Leociak, J. Getto warszawskie: Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście [The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to a Non-Existent City]. Warsaw, 2001.

Fater, I. Jidisze muzik in Pojln cwiszn bajde welt milchomes [Jewish Music in Poland Between the Two World Wars]. Tel Aviv, 1970.

Fuks, M. "Straty osobowe żydowskiego środowiska muzycznego" [Personnel Losses of the Jewish Musical Community]. Biuletyn ŻIH, 1978, nos. 3–4.

Lerski, T. Syrena Record: Poland's First Recording Company 1904–1939. Preface by J. Kański; English translation by B. Dudycz-Hajgiel. Warsaw–New York, 2004.

Lerski, T.M. Encyklopedia kultury polskiej XX wieku: Muzyka – teatr – film [Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Polish Culture: Music – Theatre – Film]. Warsaw, 2007.

"Sztromberg Adam Abram." Virtual Shtetl, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. sztetl.org.pl/en/node/3949

"Sztromberg, Adam." Cyfrowa Biblioteka Polskiej Piosenki [Digital Library of Polish Song]. bibliotekapiosenki.pl/osoby/Sztromberg_Adam

"Stromberg Adam" (entry no. 290). Lexicon of Jewish Musicians in Poland, in Jewish Music in Poland Between the World Wars, JewishGen Yizkor Book Project. www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/musicians/mus238.html

Sources: Virtual Shtetl, Cyfrowa Biblioteka Polskiej Piosenki, JewishGen

A note on the sources

The details above are consistent across three independent references. The Virtual Shtetl biography (drawn from L.T. Błaszczyk's biographical dictionary of Jews in Polish musical culture) and the Polish Song Library entry (based on Tomasz Lerski's research) agree on his dates, instruments, recording work, pseudonym, and ghetto activity, and both place his death in July or August 1942. The JewishGen "Lexicon of Jewish Musicians in Poland" lists him — under the alternative spelling "Stromberg Adam" — as "a violinist, soloist," 1879–1942, of Warsaw, a Holocaust victim, which matches the other accounts on his dates, profession, and fate.