There was music in the Nazi extermination camps. But almost no one knows.
Marches, folk songs, famous arias, dances, hymns, even jazz music!
Each camp had its own anthem: In Dachau, the phrase "Arbeit macht frei" was echoed, in Börgemoor, (the camp for the most dangerous political opponents) it was the song of the "Fen Swamp Soldiers" by Rudi Goguel, a song that reached many camps, including Sachsenhausen and the women's camp in Ravensbrück.
The small orchestras of detainees would greet the other prisoners as they went off to work and waited for them to return. They welcomed newcomers, brightened up their oppressors' little parties.
And accompanied those who headed to the gas chambers….
In Sachsenhausen, there was an extraordinary vocal group of eight voices: the Sing-Sing Boys. Their main skill was imitating instruments with their voices.
In Natzwailer-Struthof, a small orchestra gathered in the evenings to play in total silence, as everyone collapsed from fatigue and hunger.
At Bełżec, music was played in the area between the gas chambers and the burial pits, and it often accompanied the Sonderkommando's activity.
And then there was Terezín.
But Terezín was something else: it was a scam!
Created to deceive the Red Cross and the whole of Europe about the real living conditions in the camps, this transit camp (towards Auschwitz) became populated with numerous intellectual prisoners and musicians of all kinds. In Terezín, they performed theatrical works, even for children (the same actors were the child prisoners), cabaret, jazz concerts, chamber music concerts, solo piano recitals.
The Nazis liked it.
Music served as a control factor, a valve for release, a social activity within the camp.
Josef Mengele was crazy about Schumann's piece "Die Träumerei" that the prisoners played for him. Even Himmler enjoyed listening to those small orchestras.
And, then, the führer – everyone knew – loved music (the right kind, of course!). He called it "the queen of the Arts," felt happy at Villa Wahnfried - where Wagner had found "peace" – and where he went to discuss "pure music," while Winifred (the young wife of the eldest son of the great composer, prisoner of a sham marriage) sat on his lap calling him "Uncle Wolf."
Goebbels knew it well, coined the term "Degenerate Music" (and organized a famous exhibition against it) to condemn, first of all, Jazz; then other "impure" music genres. And, since it worked, he then turned it into "Degenerate Art" and used it with the effectiveness we – unfortunately – know.
Now, little Esther, when barely eighteen, ends up in the hell of Auschwitz-Birkenau, she doesn’t know any of these things.
She only knows she is too frail to survive the exhausting work of the camp.
So, when Zofia Tschaikowska, a Polish deportee, a mediocre violinist, whom the Nazis had ordered to form a small orchestra, put an accordion in her hands, she understood it was the only way to save herself.
Esther had never played the accordion, but her father - the chief cantor of the Jewish community in Saarbrücken – had made her take piano lessons.
They ordered her to play "Du Hast Glück Bei Den Frau’n Bel Ami" a popular song of the time. And Esther managed to do so without even knowing how.
Thus Music saved her life.
Alma Rosé, Gustav Mahler's niece and a great violinist, was put in charge of directing the orchestra until her death - which seems to have been due to poisoning.
It wasn't easy: they had to compose on glued pieces of toilet paper (a repertoire memorized prolonged the prisoners' lives). They often played in delirious conditions, in the cold, in the rain, at dawn or at night while the camp commander forced them to sing military songs, shouting and beating.
It wasn't easy: the living conditions were always those of the camp, even if the musicians were not subjected to exhausting work shifts. Esther also fell ill with typhus.
It wasn't easy playing for those going to the ovens.
It wasn't easy.
But Esther survived.
She went to Israel. She thought it was her home. And she tried to give something back to the Music: she taught, played, composed.
Then she got married and had children.
But Israel was not her home.
It hadn't been easy to adapt: there was a silent prejudice weighing on the survivors, almost a condemnation. How could they have allowed it? It wasn't easy to come to terms with such a History, with such a heavy stone!
But Esther settled in. She worked and raised her family. The problem was the political choices of the Israeli State.
Now, someone like Esther, intolerance – which is the cursed mother of fascism - recognizes it immediately when she sees it, and someone like her, you don't keep quiet.
It's 1960 and our Esther takes her husband and her children and leaves Israel. She returns to Germany. There she resumes playing, teaching, and telling her story. And keeping her antennas up and her nose trained to smell, in time, the stench of fascism when it comes. She founded, with others like her, the Auschwitz Komitee Deutschland. And she forms a musical group with her children, the "Coincidence." They perform traditional Yiddish music and songs of the Resistance, protest songs, and music of oppressed people. They travel a lot, they get listened to.
But it's not enough.
Esther has her antennas up and sees that intolerance (the cursed mother of all fascisms), in Germany, has begun to seep through again. She sees that the Beast – which she knows well – is trying to raise its head throughout Europe.
She knows its stench well.
Esther knows that one must speak (someone like her you don't keep quiet), that you need to put up a barrier, that you mustn't turn away when walls rise and barriers come up.
She's over ninety years old but hasn't lost the desire to fight.
But, above all, she knows you must speak, first of all, to the young. That anti-fascism, the memory of the Shoah, the denunciation of intolerance risk becoming just icons for old (and boring) nostalgics.
So Esther decides to do Rap!
And here another story must be told: there's a German, a Turk, and an Italian.
They form a rap group. At first, they are five, then they remain three. They want to speak about a multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic Germany, a Germany that doesn’t know and doesn't want to know it is such. Success doesn't come, but they don't give up.
Then they meet Esther.
They will make two records, "For Life" and "Life Continues," later collected in a box set "Love Life" containing the two discs plus some live tracks. Above all, they give a lot of concerts around Europe. Then the Italian leaves the group to become a chef and in his place comes Esther’s son.
What kind of music do they make? How do these records sound?
Do you really care?
Never as in this case does the "what" matter much more than the "how." Anyway, it’s rap, perhaps not the most original. But do you expect me to talk about "flow," "groove," or "style" for this stuff?
Esther is 96 years old, she sings, she dances, she "raps" and she doesn't keep quiet. Esther is intense: her wrinkles are caverns, roads that go far, and her eyes are flames. Yes, Esther is beautiful in her own way: she is beautiful like an idea.
They also came to Italy, she and the Microphone Mafia. Esther wanted to speak out against the shame of closed ports (I told you, you don’t keep her quiet). They also wrote a book about her: "The Girl with the Accordion" (edited by Antonella Romeo).
So Esther continues to tell her story.
A story that few know.
That there was music in the Nazi extermination camps.
Todah achot Esther.
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