Memory
Music amongst Displaced Persons
The Displaced Persons’ camps of occupied post-war Europe were home to a diverse range of music used as a means to chronicle what they had experienced.
Memory
David Botwinik
Composer
David Botwinik is a composer of Yiddish music and a music teacher. At the age of almost 13, he began his studies at the Yidisher muzik-institut conservatory in Vilna. Later, he studied at the Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia, Rome, Italy.
Mieczysław Weinberg
Composer
The prolific Soviet composer Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) wrote 22 symphonies, 17 string quartets, 7 operas, 6 concertos, 3 ballets, 30 sonatas and more than 200 songs as well as 60 film scores and incidental music for theatre and circus.
Mikhail Gnessin
Composer
Mikhail Fabianovich Gnessin was a Russian Jewish composer and teacher. Gnessin's works "The Maccabeans" and "The Youth of Abraham" earned him the nickname the "Jewish Glinka".
Steve Reich
Composer
In Different Trains (1988), Steve Reich presents a semi-autobiographical account of the Holocaust, electronically interweaving his memories as a Jewish child in the 1940s with those of Holocaust survivor children who later recorded their testimonies.
Memory
Music in Nazi Camps - Exhibition Review
A review of the Paris exhibition, Le Musique dans les camps nazis, curated by Elise Petit.
Memory
Music in the Bergen-Belsen DP-camp
British forces established a DP camp in Belsen, which existed until 1950. Concerts, theatre, dance, folk music and other genres of entertainment flourished.
Memory
On a heym, on a dakh ♫
On a heym, on a dakh (Without a home, without a roof) is a song that the 19 year old survivor, Ludwig Hamburger, learned while interned in Buchenwald.
Memory
ORT and the DP Camps
The end of WWII presented ORT and other relief organisations with many challenges. As many as 80,000 Jews passed through ORT training projects after the war.
Memory
Songs From Testimonies
The Fortunoff Video Archive was the first of its kind to capture Holocaust testimony on video. The Songs from Testimonies project exposes its music and poetry.
Name
Artist
Category
Time
Evgeny Evtushenko (1962)
Music after the Holocaust
Orchestral Music
16:10
Lyrics
1940.
On my birthday
The Germans walked-walked into Holland
Germans invaded Hungary
I was in 2nd grade
I had a teacher
A very tall man, his head was completely plastered smooth
He said, "Black Crows-
Black Crows invaded our country many years ago"
And he pointed right at me
No more school
You must go away
And she said, "Quick, go!"
And he said, "Don't breathe"
Into the cattle wagons
And for four days and four nights
And then we went through…
The idea for the piece comes from my childhood. [Due to my parent’s divorce], I travelled back and forth by train frequently between New York and Los Angeles from 1939 to 1942. […] While these trips were exciting and romantic at the time, I now look back and think that, if I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride on very different trains. With this in mind, I wanted to make a piece that would accurately reflect the whole situation.
Jüdische Chronik ♫ - Excerpt from the CD Jüdische Chronik, courtesy of Edel Classics (www.edel.com).
Music after the Holocaust
Orchestral Music
06:39
(1947)
Music after the Holocaust
Orchestral Music
07:21
Topical Song
Music after the Holocaust
01:38
Topical Song
Music after the Holocaust
03:22
'Heveti shalom aleykhem' (I bring you greetings of peace), also often titled in the plural, is one of the best-known and -loved Hebrew folk songs. In this rare recording it is sung by surviving Polish children in postwar France, in a recording taken by the Latvian-American psychologist David Boder in September 1946.
Topical Song
Music after the Holocaust
03:47