Music is often considered a universal language, a way of expressing emotions and experiences that transcend words. But music can also be a powerful tool of resistance, survival, and memory, especially in times of oppression and genocide. This is the case of the music that was created and performed by the prisoners of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where more than one million people were killed during World War II.
For decades, the musical legacy of Auschwitz was largely unknown and forgotten, until a remarkable discovery in 2016. A Polish musicologist, Dr. Patricia Hall, found a collection of handwritten manuscripts of songs that were arranged and performed by the Auschwitz prisoners in the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. These songs, which were written in various languages and styles, were part of the camp’s cultural life, organized by the inmates themselves or by the Nazi guards for propaganda purposes.
Dr. Hall, a professor at the University of Michigan, was intrigued by these musical documents, which revealed a different aspect of the camp’s history and the prisoners’ resilience. She decided to study them in detail, transcribe them, and bring them back to life. In collaboration with the Contemporary Directions Ensemble, a chamber orchestra based at her university, she prepared the first public performance of one of these songs, titled “The Most Beautiful Time of Life”, in 2018.
The song, which was originally composed by Franz Grothe, a German film composer, and performed by the Auschwitz Men’s Orchestra in 1942, is a cheerful foxtrot that contrasts sharply with the horrors of the camp. Dr. Hall explained that the song was probably chosen by the orchestra leader, Alma Rosé, a Jewish violinist and niece of Gustav Mahler, who was forced to conduct the ensemble by the SS. Rosé, who died in Auschwitz in 1944, tried to protect her musicians from the worst atrocities by selecting songs that would please the Nazi officers and avoid their wrath.
Dr. Hall’s research and performance of “The Most Beautiful Time of Life” received international attention and acclaim, as well as criticism from some Holocaust survivors and scholars who questioned the appropriateness and ethics of playing music from Auschwitz. Dr. Hall defended her project as a way of honoring the victims and preserving their musical heritage, which she described as “a testament to the indomitable spirit of the people who created it” .
Dr. Hall’s work is part of a larger effort to recover and explore the music of the Holocaust, which has been neglected and marginalized for many years. As Stephen Muir, a musicologist at the University of Southampton, wrote, “One of the earliest musical impacts of the advance of National Socialism in Germany and Austria was the flight of numerous composers into exile from continental Europe. The list of these émigré musicians includes both the most celebrated and the most neglected of all 20th-century composers”.
Muir, who is the director of the Performing the Jewish Archive project, which aims to rediscover and perform the works of Jewish artists who were persecuted by the Nazis, also noted that music played an important role in the daily life of the prisoners in the ghettos and camps. He wrote, “Even in the death camps, official orchestras were established and there were regular performances. Often this music-making was an activity commanded by guards, or was used by the SS to break prisoners’ wills. However, away from the eye of the SS officers, Jews secretly created their own music as a means to cope, survive and document” .
Some of these musical creations were also used as a form of protest, satire, and warning. For example, at Theresienstadt, a ghetto and transit camp in Czechoslovakia, where many prominent Jewish musicians and artists were imprisoned, Viktor Ullmann and Peter Kien collaborated on an opera that mocked Hitler and the Nazi death machinery, titled “The Emperor of Atlantis”. The opera, which was rehearsed but never performed in the camp, was later discovered and staged after the war .
The music of the Holocaust, whether composed in exile or in captivity, is a valuable and poignant source of historical and cultural knowledge, as well as a tribute to the human spirit and dignity. As Dr. Hall said, “Music is one of the most powerful ways we can understand the past. It can also help us to heal and to hope” .
