Once worlds away, cousins unite at UFPA performance

March 4, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida faculty member, whose family had been separated to escape Nazi oppression, was united with her relative at the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra performance, presented Feb. 19, by University of Florida Performing Arts.

Betheny Bechtel sat in the audience as her cousin, Eugenie Bahlsen, played with the orchestra before the two met for the first time at the post-performance reception, held in conjunction with the Alumni Association’s Back to College event.

Bechtel’s grandmother was living in Germany at the onset of Nazi intervention during World War II. Fearing persecution, the family fled, splitting between the United States and South Africa. Dr. Bechtel is a longstanding Gainesville resident who has worked in the UF chemistry department on various projects in molecular structure. Bahlsen is her second cousin from the South African part of the family and plays first violin in the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra.

The orchestra’s maestro thanked the University of Florida Performing Arts from the stage for being one of the most “daring presenters in the United States that was willing to take a chance on this first-ever orchestra out of South Africa; presenting them as a part of their post-apartheid, free world, concert offering.”