Music had a huge presence in everyday life during the Holocaust. \u00a0The Nazis used music as a method of torture and propaganda, resistance fighters used songs as a clandestine way to deliver messages, and musician prisoners performed concerts and wrote new music in the camps.\u00a0 Ultimately for most, music became a profound and necessary outlet to express emotions and preserve humanity in the face of extraordinary violence and discrimination.<\/p>\n
An inmate in Sachsenhausen named Eric Goodman, gave this account of forced singing: \u201cLate in the evening, when we were already tired and longed for the little bit of rest that remained for us in the day, we were made out of pure abuse to remain standing in the courtyard and to sing, sing continuously, into the depths of the night.\u00a0 The same happened when, now and then, someone tried to escape.\u00a0 Then the sirens howled eerily through the night, until the victim had been seized, but in the meantime all the prisoners had to remain standing on the big square, without food, without pause to rest, and had to sing.\u00a0 During this singing many perished, exhausted.\u201d[1]<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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- Propaganda\/work: Official camp orchestras and choruses were made up of both amateurs and professionals and had a variety of functions.\u00a0 Some existed for propaganda purposes, to convince\u00a0the outside world that the Jews weren\u2019t being treated so badly.\u00a0 Nazis used these orchestras as a way to organize prisoners, keep them occupied and calm.\u00a0 The orchestras played concerts at official events, like Hitler\u2019s birthday, for example, or Nazi holidays.\u00a0 They performed for both their fellow prisoners and also for the officers for their entertainment.\u00a0 In some cases, music was played during executions — one source said that marching music drowned out the sound of guns and\/or screams.\u00a0 In Auschwitz the prison orchestra played at the camp gates every morning and evening as inmates walked to and from work.\u00a0 Often, being a member of the orchestra was a lifesaver, literally.\u00a0\u00a0 Though these groups were all sanctioned by the Nazis and of course had some horrific functions, they could also be meaningful to the prisoners.\u00a0 Karel Stancl wrote about his time in the Sing-Sing Boys, an a capella group in the camp of Sachsenhausen<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cNone of us had studied art professionally, but we were held together by our common fate, and by our common love of music and singing.\u00a0 We also wanted to express our contempt and our resistance towards the bestiality and tedium that surrounded us.\u00a0 We were bound by the endeavor \u201cto do something\u201d against the monotonous ill-treatment, the sadness and the misery of camp life, to raise ourselves every day over the wall with the barbed wire.\u00a0 I always see us in my mind\u2019s eye, the way in which we \u2013 bald headed, dressed in striped rags, in wood-soled shoes with our numbers on our breasts and our trousers \u2013 gave gala concerts.\u00a0 It is almost unbelievable what power there was in our singing, and how it helped us to humanize relations in an inhuman milieu and an inhuman time.\u201d[2]<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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- Spontaneous bouts of song in the barracks by prisoners<\/li>\n
- An inmate in Sachsenhausen described this scene after the Nazis left the inmates after a particularly brutal treatment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cAll at once the oppressive silence was broken by a mournful tune.\u00a0\u00a0 It was the plaintive tones of the ancient Kol Nidre prayer.\u00a0 I raised myself up to see whence it came.\u00a0 There, close to the wall, the moonlight caught the uplifted face of an old man, who in self-forgetful, pious absorption, was singing softly to himself the sorrowful melody with the familiar deep moving words\u2026We sat up very quietly so as not to disturb the old man, and he did not notice that we were listening.\u00a0 As if transported into another world, he chanted the prayer to the end, so softly that the words were scarcely distinguishable to those who did not know them by heart.\u00a0 His old, quavering voice held us in a spell.\u00a0 When at last he was silent, there was exaltation among us, an exaltation which men can experience only when they have fallen as low as we had fallen and then, through the mystic power of a deathless prayer, have awakened once more to the world of the spirit.\u201d[3]<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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- Songs were written to describe circumstances, record history, and rally resistance.\u00a0 This song was written just after news was received of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.\u00a0 Here is one person\u2019s reminiscence of the creator of the song.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cHirschke came to my room bright and early\u2026He began to sing softly, but full of excitement.\u00a0 His eyes glowed with little sparks\u2026 Kumen vet noch undzer oysgebenkte sho\u2026 Where did he get his faith?\u00a0 His voice became firmer.\u00a0 He tapped out the rhythm with his foot, as if he were marching\u2026\u00a0 We lived with the spirit of April and the Warsaw ghetto uprising.\u00a0 The partisan staff in the Vilna ghetto decided that the song should become the hymn of its fighters.\u00a0 But the people did not wait for this decision, and the song had already spread to the ghettos, the concentration and labor camps, and into the woods to other partisan brigades.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Wz-ra7GAhQc<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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- Music thrived in Terezin (also known as Thereseinstadt), a camp in Czechoslovakia where many Jewish musicians and artists were sent.\u00a0 Though performances began\u00a0spontaneously and covertly, the Nazis soon allowed cultural life to flourish and used it to create a propaganda film.\u00a0 At Terezin, there were at least 4 different orchestras, choruses, chamber groups, jazz bands (one called the Ghetto Swingers) and a fully staged children\u2019s opera, Brundibar.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n