Alexa Julian

Miss Schmidt

Honors English 9

27 February 2018

An Annotated Bibliography: Music in Concentration Camps

“Aktion Reinhard Songs and Music.” Aktion Reinhard Songs and Music, 24 Aug. 2006,

<www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/arsongs.html>.

Music played a huge role in the lives of inmates in the concentration camps of Belzec,

Sobibor, and Treblinka. At these three Aktion Reinhard Camps, music was implemented

in daily life to make prisoners feel calm, thus causing them to perform better labor and

become more pliable to perform orders. Additionally, music was used to humiliate

inmates, entertain SS officers, and even drown out the screams of those being gassed. At

Belzec, there was a small orchestra made up of six musicians. They played as other

prisoners were being gassed, and they played on instruments taken from the same

murdered inmates. They also played as new transports were being taken in. A survivor

account details an experience where a transport arrived, and all but one person was

immediately gassed; SS officers beat the remaining prisoner mercilessly and the orchestra

had to play throughout the entire ordeal. In Sobibor, there was an orchestra and choir.

They performed as inmates were being transported; additionally, all prisoners of the
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camp were required to sing SS military songs in unison as they went to and from work.

SS Officer Weiss used to force one prisoner to dress up as a stereotypical ancient Jew and

sing a song mocking Moses and the death of Jews. In the camp, concerts were also

organized to make inmates feel calm. In Treblinka, there was an orchestra composed of

instruments including the violin, flute, and mandolin. They played the latest German and

Ukrainian hits as the Jews were being gassed and for special parties of SS officers. In

1922, famous Warsaw musician Artur Gold arrived and became conductor of the

orchestra. After his arrival, the orchestra developed uniforms and he was ordered to

compose a camp hymn including the lyrics: “All we have left is Treblinka. It is our

destiny.”

“Auschwitz.” Music and the Holocaust, World ORT,

<holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/death-camps/auschwitz/>.

In Auschwitz, the first camp orchestra was established in 1941 with Franz Nierychlo as

conductor. An orchestra of prisoners, rather than SS officers, was established so that

music could be always accessible and controllable. The original orchestra included seven

members that played the violin, contrabass, accordion, trumpet, saxophone, and

percussion. The instruments were seized from nearby towns before the musicians’ own

instruments were shipped from their homes. With these instruments, the musicians

rehearsed in a basement of Block 24. The room, including a podium and grand piano, was

also home to concerts. The orchestra eventually expanded to over 100 members and in

addition to performing in the crowded basement, they played every day as the prisoners
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marched to work. Originally, they were required to play outside, regardless of weather,

but as time went on they were permitted to play from indoors. They also played private

concerts for SS officers each Saturday, at parties or group orgies. Similarly, they

performed concerts for camp commander Hoess and those close to him on Sunday. In

combination with these duties, the musicians also had labor requirements. Suicide rates

were high among the musicians likely due to this combination of high-pressure duties. As

time went on, the orchestra started to diminish in size as the people were exterminated. In

addition to the orchestra, there were several individual “musical slaves” including Coco

Schumann and prominent Italian Emilio Jani. There was also a choir of Polish prisoners

and a swing band that performed exclusively for the SS.

Poggioli, Sylvia. “Honoring 'Our Will To Live': The Lost Music Of The Holocaust.” NPR,

National Public Radio, 25 Jan. 2013, <www.npr.org/2013/01/25/169364174/honoring-

our-will-to-live-the-lost-music-of-the-holocaust>.

Francesco Lotoro, a pianist and music teacher from Southern Italy, is on a quest to

rediscover music lost during the Holocaust. He has found thousands of compositions

created in concentration and labor camps. By doing this, he aims at showing that the

terrors of the Holocaust could not rid humanity of its desire to create. Lotoro began this

journey in 1991 and has since visited concentration camps, bookstores, archives, and

survivors of the horrors. He has collected over 4,000 pieces, including one from Czech

composer Rudolf Karel. The piece, entitled “Nonet,” Lotoro regards as sounding like a
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telegraph. He believes, due the pattern of the notes, that the piece could possibly be

Morse code, used to send a sort of message. Karel did not have access to paper in camp,

but he used toilet paper to write out segments of his compositions. Lotoro was able to

track down some of these segments, piecing them together to reconstruct the piece of

“Nonet.” Furthermore, Lotoro has recorded 400 of the pieces he has discovered and put

them into a collection of 24 CD’s. This includes a piece by Austrian Viktor Ullmann

who, before being sent to Auschwitz where he died, remarked that: “By no means did we

sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon and our endeavor with respect to arts

was commensurate with our will to live.” The compositions recovered are many different

genres, including classical, folk, and swing. There are also many lively, upbeat songs.

Bret Werb of the U.S. Holocaust Museum says this is not surprising, as prisoners needed

an escape from reality’s horrors. These songs were passed on from inmate to inmate, and

for many of these melodies there is no actual documentation but only what people

remember. Lotoro has tracked down many of these lost songs through interviews with

people who remember the lyrics.

Vulliamy, Ed. “Terezín: the Nazi camp where music played amid the horror.” The Observer,

Guardian News and Media, 5 Apr. 2013.

<www.theguardian.com/music/2013/apr/05/terezin-nazi-camp-music-eva-clarke>.

Eva Clarke was born in the Terezín camp, which was home to much of Czechoslovokia’s

greatest musical talent. Clarke’s parents were both taken to Terezín from
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Czechoslovokia. Her mother, Anka Bergman, recalls the musical scene of the camp as a

survivor. In 1943 the Nazis put on a children’s opera and invited a delegation from the

International Committee of the Red Cross to view it. Deceiving the delegation, the Nazis

had convinced them that Terezín was sanitary and posed no threat. On the contrary, the

very same children that performed were transported to the gas chambers days later.

Additionally, the Nazis staged a documentary entitled The Fuhrer Gives a City to the

Jews. The camp was cleaned up for filming, and the film showed “happy” inmates

playing football and tending to gardens. It also included music from the Terezín

Orchestra under the conductor Karel Ancerl, who went on to become conductor of the

Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Bergman worked in the kitchen and often saw Ancerl,

and soon the two became friends. Although, Ancerl and other prominent musicians were

shipped to Auschwitz soon after the filming for the “documentary.” Great composers

including Gideon Klein, Viktor Ullmann, and Hans Krasa were killed there; Ancerl was

not killed but his family was. Zedenka Fantlova, another musician, was also shipped to

Auschwitz but survived; she recalls a strong companionship she found in her fellow

musicians that kept her going. Back in Terezín, Bergman conceived and was then going

to be shipped to Auschwitz, likely to be gassed considering she was pregnant. However,

on the way to Auschwitz, she gave birth and they were liberated soon thereafter as they

stopped on the journey. Bergman and her daughter, Eva Clarke, seek to educate others

about the lost music of the time.

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Wiesel, Elie. Night. Hill and Wang, 2006.

A boy named Elie Wiesel lived in Sighet, Transylvania at the time of the Holocaust. He

was deeply religious and was learning Kabbalah with the help of mentor Moishe the

Beadle. However, Moishe was taken to a concentration camp. He managed to escape,

though, and came back to warn his community, but the people didn’t listen. They carried

on in their lives until the German army arrived. The Jews of Sighet were then moved to

ghettoes. Subsequently, Wiesel’s father, a prominent town figure, was summoned to a

Jewish Council meeting where he discovered that the community was soon to be

deported. They were crowded into cattle cars and a woman named Mrs. Schachter

became crazy, rambling on about fire and flames. The other occupants tried to quiet her

through force. Upon the arrival at Birkenau, they see that her words served as a dark

foreshadowing for what was to come. Wiesel witnessed babies being thrown into fire,

and the tragedy continued as he and his father were separated from the rest of their

family. Wiesel and his father survived on meager rations of bread and soup, and Wiesel

soon started to lose his faith as he experienced so many horrors; he wondered how God

could let such things happen. In the camp, Wiesel and his father encountered a distant

relative, Stein of Antwerp, who asked about his family; Wiesel lied and told Stein that his

family was fine. When Stein found out the truth, he had no reason to hang on anymore,

and they never saw him again. Soon thereafter Wiesel and his father were transferred to

Buna. They worked in a factory, counting electrical parts. At Buna, Wiesel avoided

giving up his tooth’s gold crown until the foreman Franek started tormenting Wiesel’s

father, causing Wiesel to finally give the gold crown up. Wiesel also caught the Kapo,
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Idek, having sex with a Polish girl, so Wiesel was whipped 25 times. He later saw

prisoners being hanged, including a young boy who was not immediately killed but

instead suffered, hovering between life and death. Later, his foot started to swell up, so he

went to the infirmary to have it operated upon. While Wiesel was in the infirmary, the

camp was going to be evacuated because the Russian army was coming. Wiesel and his

father, instead of staying in the infirmary, decided to join the death march. Prisoners were

forced to run, being shot at if they fell behind. When the group took a break to rest, a man

called Rabbi Eliahu came looking for his son. Wiesel told Rabbi Eliahu that he hadn’t

seen his son, but Wiesel then remembered seeing his son purposefully run ahead to be rid

of his father. Wiesel hoped he wouldn’t do something similar to his own father. As the

prisoners reached Gleiwitz, they were crammed on top of each other. Wiesel ended up

near a friend named Juliek, who had brought his violin with him. Juliek played a

Beethoven piece, but in the morning both he and the violin were crushed. Then, the

prisoners were transported to Buchenwald where Wiesel’s father grew weak, was beaten,

and then was removed the morning after the beating. The inmates were liberated soon

thereafter, and as Wiesel recovered he regarded himself as a corpse.