Leo Spellman composed Rhapsody 1939-1945 at a Displaced Persons camp in Germany to tell the world, through his music, the horrors of the Holocaust and the joy of liberation. When he emigrated to Canada in 1948 the manuscript remained locked in a trunk until it was discovered by a musicologist more than 50 years later. The Rhapsody had three performances in the United States before Spellman began working with composer/conductor Paul Hoffert to re-orchestrate and expand the piece for a 2011 CD release. The following year, the Ashkenaz Festival presented a sold-out performance of The Rhapsody with Spellman and his 105-year-old sister Chana Wallace in attendance. Spellman died three months later, just short of his 100th birthday.

Born in Ostrowiec, Poland in 1913 to a dynasty of musicians that included his first cousin Wladyslaw Szpilman (subject of the Oscar-winning film The Pianist), Spellman began his professional life as a pianist at the age of nine accompanying silent films. His career as a composer and performer flourished until the Nazi invasion in 1939. Life immediately became perilous for the 15,000 Jews in Ostrowiec. By 1941 they had lost all liberties and were confined to a ghetto. Spellman was able to escape and survived by his wits and luck in the forests surrounding the town where he worked with the rebellious Polish Partisans smuggling guns. He was always one step ahead of death.

In 1943, a young Polish student, Henryk Wronski, risked his life by renting a small apartment for Spellman, his wife, and brother-in-law. The apartment was ostensibly for Wronski to use while  in the city. It was padlocked from the outside. No one knew of their existence. They were unable to speak above a whisper, make a fire, or cook for fear of being discovered. Spellman built a small, hidden compartment behind a wall which saved their lives when the apartment was broken into and occupied for three days by Nazi soldiers. Spellman documented their eighteen months of fear and deprivation in a secret diary that was only discovered after his death. Excerpts are revealed for the first time in The Rhapsody, narrated by Stephen Fry. The accounts are raw, intimate, and filled with suspense. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has declared the diary to be one of the most important documents of its kind.

The Rhapsody unfolds like a thriller as Spellman's diary entries draw us into his world of terror. They're brought to life through inventive artwork and animation and are intercut with his sister's chilling accounts  of her time in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Spellman’s words and music are the backbone of The Rhapsody, but its heart is Spellman himself. He was a complicated man, in turn courageous, irascible, witty, bright, stubborn, charming, sly, and perceptive. In short, he bore all the hallmarks of a survivor.

Leo Spellman said, "I always dreamed I had to survive the Nazis to tell the world what happened". At ninety-eight, he endured the pain of revisiting the past to fulfill that dream. The Rhapsody celebrates the creativity of Spellman's music, honours the tenacity and resilience of the human spirit, and is an affirmation that all those who have died at the hands of oppressors, including 6,000,000 Jews, did not die in vain.