Music in the Holocaust
The use of music by the Nazis and by their Jewish victims
by Prof. Joshua Jacobson

 

 

From 1933 to 1945 Nazi ideologues devised and implemented schemes whereby music could be used to further their goals. Their propaganda promoted the idea of German superiority in the art of composition and the inferiority of any music that had been touched by Jews.

For centuries, Germans had considered Jews to be culturally inferior. In his 1850 article "Das Judenthum in der Musik" ("Judaism in Music"), the composer Richard Wagner wrote, "The Jew speaks the modern European languages merely as learned, and not as mother tongues. This must necessarily prevent him from any capability of therein expressing himself idiomatically, independently and comfortably to his nature. Our entire European art and civilization have remained a foreign tongue to the Jew." (Wagner, p. 84) Wagner also decried the influence of Jewish conductors and music critics: "The Jew … has been able to reach the rulership of public taste in the widest spread of modern art forms, especially in music." (Wagner, p. 87)

Eighty years later Hitler wrote, "I have the most intimate familiarity with Wagner's mental processes. At every stage of my life I come back to him." (Rose, p. 182) Indeed, the Nazis carried out Wagner's theories in a way that had never been done before. In 1933 the Reichsmusikkammer (National Ministry of Music) introduced a succession of policies aimed at protecting Aryan culture. All Jewish music teachers, performers, composers and musicologists were expelled from their posts. Music composed or performed by Jews was banned from concert programs and broadcasts; their recordings and sheet music were removed from stores; textbooks were revised to remove offending references. In 1938 Hans Ziegler organized an exhibit of "Degenerate Music" (Entartete Musik) in Düsseldorf. (figure 1) Visitors to the exhibit could see and hear examples of what Ziegler called, "the artistic aspects of Cultural Bolshevism … and the triumph of Jewish impudence." (Levi, p. 96)

The Germans also used music to control prisoners in concentration camps. An orchestra of Jewish inmates was created to play joyous music to distract the new arrivals as they disembarked from the trains and awaited selection, and to play rousing marches to energize prisoner slaves as they marched off to forced-labor details. The performers were rewarded with extra rations of food, better clothing, and more humane living conditions; they were temporarily spared from the murderous work details and from the crematorium itself.

In one camp the Nazis organized extensive musical activities. In November of 1941 the Nazis evacuated Terezín (Theresienstadt) and transformed that ancient walled city into a huge holding pen for the Jews of Czechoslovakia until they could be shipped to the death camps. At first, the Nazis organized cultural activities to promote calm among the inmates and to distract them from their fate. But, a year later, they decided to use Terezín as a "model camp," a facade to hide the truth of the extermination of European Jewry. There were choirs, chamber ensembles, orchestras, opera companies, a cabaret, and a jazz band called the "Ghetto Swingers." (figure 2) Inspectors from the International Red Cross were invited to Terezín, where they were shown gardens, schools, concerts and cafés. The prisoners' performances were even featured in a Nazi propaganda film. But the truth was that of the 140,000 men, women and children who were sent to Terezín, only 11,000 survived.

Composition and performance thrived in the "model camp" of Terezin, not merely because it was enforced, but because it provided spiritual uplift. The prisoners eagerly participated in the various activities, led by some of Europe's most prominent composers and performers, including Karel Ancerl, Karel Berman, Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, Paul Kling, Hans Krasa, Rafael Schächter, Zikmund Schul, and Vikor Ullmann. Ullmann declared, "Terezin served to enhance, not to impede, my musical activities, … by no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon, … our endeavor with respect to Art was commensurate with our will to live." (Bloch, p. 162)

Jews also used music as a means of protest, satire and warning. In Terezin, Viktor Ullmann and Peter Kien collaborated on The Emperor of Atlantis, an opera that satirized Hitler and the Nazi death machinery. A pogrom in the village of Przytik inspired the Polish singer Mordecai Gebirtig to compose "Es Brent" ("It's Burning"), a song that warns of the dangers of passivity in the face of oppression. In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Martin Rosenberg wrote "Jüdischer Todessang" ("Jewish Death-song") for his clandestine chorus of twenty-five prisoners when they were about to be sent to the Auschwitz death camp. Rosenberg hoped that his song would be liberated and inform the world of this horror.

For others, music served as a means of expressing unbearable sadness. Mothers sang lullabies to their children not only to soothe their spirits, but also to unburden themselves of their anguish. In songs such as "Shtiller Shtiller" ("Quiet, Quiet") or "Nit Keyn Rozhinkes" ("No More Raisins"), one finds a disturbing mixture of comfort (addressed to the baby) and despair (self addressed).

Those who maintained their faith and hope had their songs, as well. Even in the face of death, some Jews sang of their ultimate faith in God and the goodness of humankind with "Ani Ma'amin" ("I Believe") and "Zol Shoyn Kumen Di Ge'uleh" (Let Our Redemption Come Soon"). And throughout Europe, Jews found courage singing the words of Hirsh Glick's partisan anthem, "Zog Nit Keyn Mol" ("Never Say This Is the End").

Music also served as an antidote to the dehumanizing tactics to which the Jews were subjected. While Nazis were branding them as sub-human, Jews used music to affirm their humanity. When they were barred from attending public concerts, they formed their own orchestras. When they were prohibited from leaving their homes at night, they organized clandestine house concerts. In the Vilna (Vilnius) ghetto, Jewish musicians, artists, writers and poets formed the Literary Artistic Circle, meeting nearly every week throughout the war for lectures, discussions and concerts. They declared, "Our bodies may be enslaved, but our souls are not." Music allowed the condemned to cling to life. As Terezín survivor Greta Hofmeister stated so powerfully, "Music! Music was life!" (Karas p. 197)

 

1035 words

 

Books And Articles

Basart, Ann. "Music and the Holocaust: A Selective Bibliography." Cum notis variorum 101 (April 1986): 1-30.

Bergmeier, Hort, Ejal Jakob Eisler, Rainer Lotz. Vorbei (Beyond Recall: A Record of Jewish Musical Life in Nazi Berlin 1933-1938). Hambergen, Germany: Bear Family Records, 2001.

Bloch, Max. "Viktor Ullmann: A Brief Biography and Appreciation." Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 3:2 (October, 1979), 150-177.

Cummins, Paul. Dachau Song: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper. New York: Peter Lang, 1992.

Fenelon, Fania, with Marcelle Routier. The Musicians of Auschwitz. Translated by Judith Landry. London: Michael Joseph, 1977. Second edition, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997.

Flam, Gila. Singing for Survival: Songs of the Lodz Ghetto, 1940-1945. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Goldman, Albert, ed. Modern Jews and Their Musical Agendas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1933.

Goldsmith, Martin. The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany. New York: John Wiley, 2000.

Jacobson, Joshua. "Music in the Holocaust." The Choral Journal 36:5 (December, 1995): 9-21.

Jacobson, Joshua. "Tsen Brider: A Jewish Requiem." The Musical Quarterly 84:3 pp. 452-474.

Kaczerginsky, Shmerke. Songs of the Ghettos and Concentration Camps. New York: CYCO - Bicher Farlag, 1948.

Kalisch, Shoshana. Yes, We Sang. NY: Harper and Row, 1985.

Karas, Joza. Music in Terezín. NY: Beaufort Books, 1985.

Kater, Michael. Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Katz, Jacob. The Darker Side of Genius: Richard Wagner's Anti-Semitism. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1986.

Laks, Szyman. Music of Another World. Translated by Chester Kisiel. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1989. (Originally published as Musiques d'un autre monde. Paris: Mercure de France, 1948.)

Mlotek, Eleanor. We Are Here: Songs of the Holocaust. NY: The Workman's Circle, 1983.

Newman, Richard (with Karen Kirtley). Alma Rosé: Vienna to Auschwitz. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 2000.

Rose, Paul Lawrence. Wagner: Race and Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Slavicky, Milan. Gideon Klein: A Fragment of Life and Work. Translated by Dagmar Steinova. Prague: Helvetica-Tempora Publishers, 1995.

Taylor, Brandon and Wilfried van der Will.The Nazification of Art. Winchester, Hampshire (UK): The Winchester Press, 1990.

Wagner, Richard. Judaism in Music And Other Essays. Translated by William Ashton Ellis. Linclon, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

Weiner, Marc A. Richard Wagner and the anti-Semitic Imagination. University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

 

Selected Recordings

Haas, Pavel and Karel Berman. Composers from Theresienstadt. Channel Classics CCS-3191.

Hear Our Voices: Songs from the Ghettos and the Camps. (Music from Terezín, Vilna, Vishnetz, Sachsenhausen, Pryztik). HaZamir HZ-009.

Klein, Gideon, Sonata for Piano (also Klein, Trio; Ullmann, String Quartet No. 3; Ullmann, Piano Sonata No. 1; Krasa, Tanec; Krasa, Brundibar; Ullmann, Abendphantasie, Immer Inmitten, Drei Jiddische Lieder, Little Cakewalk; Haas, Four Songs on Chinese Verse). Romantic Robot RR-1941.

Krakow Ghetto Notebook: The Songs of Mordecai Gebirtig. Koch 3-7295-2H-1.

Krasa, Hans. Brundibar: A Children's Opera in Two Acts. Arabesque Recordings Z6680.

Kulisiewicz, Aleksander. Songs from the Depths of Hell. Folkways FSS 37700.

Partisans of Vilna: The Songs of World War II Jewish Resistance. Flying Fish Records FF 70450.

Remember the Children: Songs for and by Children of the Holocaust. The U.S. Holocaust Museum HMCD-1901.

Ullmann, Viktor. Der Kaiser von Atlantis. London 440 854-2.

 

 

Video

The Führer Gives a City to the Jews. Germany, 1944, 23 minutes&endash;incomplete, B&W. Produced by the Ministry of Propaganda of the Third Reich. Available from the National Center for Jewish Film.

 

by Joshua Jacobson

 

Figure 1. An poster from the Entartete Musik exhibit

Figure 2: The Terezin Ghetto Swingers