Geddy Lee's Parents Met At Auschwitz

03/20/09 3:19pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Rush frontman Geddy Lee says his parents met and fell in love at the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust.

The singer/bassist is quoted in a Contactmusic.com article saying his parents' story inspires him.

"When the Nazis came into the Polish town where my mother lived, they kept the Jews in a ghetto and then marched them to a labour camp," he says. "My father was from a different village, but was at the same work camp. They were 12 or 13, and then they were both sent to Auschwitz.

"My father would bribe the guards to give her shoes or food, little signs of affection. They fell in love in that horrible environment. Then she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, and after the war, she assumed he hadn't survived. My dad made a point of finding her."

Rush released Retrospective III (1989-2008), a compilation of the band's music from over the last two decades, on March 10. Guitarist Alex Lifeson recently told the Music Radar website that the band could begin working on the follow-up to 2007's Snakes & Arrows this year with producer Nick Raskulinecz (Thornley, Foo Fighters) helming the boards again.

"After the summer, I think we'll be ready to work again," he said.

"We feel there's a dialogue [with Raskulinecz], a relationship we haven't quite finished. It's like a conversation you begin and gets cut off — Rush have more to say with Nick, I think."

Check out a video interview with Lifeson here.