Composer. He received international acclaim for co-writing a song with Jura Soyfer, while they were inmates in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, Germany. The song went on to became the anthem of these death camps. Born into a well-to-do Jewish family, he as a young man, studied from 1923 to 1929 at the Vienna Music Academy, worked as a orchestra conductor and composed music for the Viennese cabaret. In 1930 for a short time, he found employment in Germany and for the first time, was exposed the ideas of the Nazi regime. In 1938 Nazi forces overpowered neighboring countries and arresting Jews including him, who was eventually sent to the concentration camp at Dachau. While at the camp, he and other members of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra made eleven primitive musical instruments and performed concerts on Sunday afternoons for fellow inmates. He and Soyfer were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, where Soyfer soon died, but Zipper's family was able to obtain his release in February 1939. He escaped to Paris, France by March and then on to the Philippines Islands by May, where he became the director of the Manila Symphony. In 1942 when the Japanese army invaded the Philippines, he was captured and imprisoned for four months, but after released, he secretly aided the American forces. At the end of the war in 1945, he conducted to a sold-out audience the celebration symphonies of Beethoven's “Eroica” and Dvorak's “New World” in the bombed remains of the Manila's Santa Cruz Church. In 1946, he immigrated to the United States settling in New York, where he was founder and the conductor of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra. He promoted music education in public school. He and poet Langston Hughes composed the opera, “Barrier.” In 1953, he relocated to Chicago, Illinois where he founded the Music Center of the North Shore in nearby Winnetka and the National Guild of Community Music Schools. In 1972 he moved to Los Angeles, California and became director of the School of Performing Arts at the University of California at Los Angeles. He was a guest conductor for the Seoul Philharmonic in South Korea. The last twenty years of his life he conducted concerts for children in public schools with the last being on April 23, 1996. About 1940, he married Trudl Dubsky, a ballerina, and the couple remained childless. In 1992 author Paul Cummins published Zipper's biography, “Dachau Song.” His life story was a documentary, “Never Give Up,” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1996.