ORPHEUS IN HELL: MUSIC AND THERAPY IN THE HOLOCAUST

JOSEPH MORENO, MT-BC*

It is now more than 50 years since the end of theSecond World War, and that period between 1933–1945 that is now referred to as the Holocaust. TheHolocaust saw the purposeful and systematic murderof six million Jews and other minorities as a part ofHitler’s infamous “final solution,” and still stands asone of the most horrifying events in human history.

In considering the endless atrocities of the Holo-caust, one might well imagine that it would be anunlikely place to find anything that would hint at thetherapeutic role of music. And yet, music often playeda significant and even therapeutic role, not only forthe victims of the Holocaust, but for the perpetratorsas well. Music was used by the perpetrators in waysso incongruous and bizarre that they raise fundamen-tal questions about the deepest meanings of music andits relation to human emotions.

For the victims of the Holocaust, the role andmeaning of music is more clear, and in line with whatone would expect. That is, at best, music provided adegree of support, something positive to hold on to inthe worst possible circumstances, and, for some, evena means of survival. However, the victims were alsosubjected to musical torments and manipulations, and,in those perverted circumstances, their musical expe-riences were anything but positive.

By contrast, if we look at the meaning of music forthe perpetrators of the Holocaust, and the extremeways in which music was used to deceive, to humil-iate and manipulate the victims, it raises questionsthat are far more difficult to understand. How couldgenuine musical sentiment and mass murder comfort-ably coexist? How could the citizens of the country

that gave us Bach, Beethoven and Brahms not onlyhave been Hitler’s willing executioners, but evenhave used that very same music to aid in the exter-mination process of millions of Jews, and many othervictims?

It requires total reversal of medical ethics to com-prehend the fact that the mass murders in the deathcamps were directly supervised by fully qualifiedGerman physicians (Lifton, 1988). In one character-istic example of the disassociation between murderand music carried out by a physician, an SS doctor inBuchenwald camp,“ . . . finished off a whole row ofprisoners with injections of sodium evipan and thenstrolled from the operating room, a cigarette in hand,merrily whistling ‘The End of a Perfect Day’ ”(Kogan, 1980, p. 149).

The best known of the Nazi German physiciansinvolved in the Holocaust was Dr. Josef Mengele,who carried out selections of the arriving transports atAuschwitz. In a typical selection of about 1,500 peo-ple, as many as 1,200–1,300 would go directly to thegas chambers. During this process, Mengele wouldoften be sitting and whistling his favorite music. Hispreferences included Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, Pucciniand Johann Strauss (Lengyel, 1947). A “long-timelover of opera and classical music,” the “music-mad”Mengele was in many ways a cultured man whosepassion for music well preceded his involvement inthe death camps (Lengyel, 1947). This contradictorybehavior, of music-making and selecting victims forthe gas chambers at the same time, exemplifies themany disturbing questions about the meaning of mu-sic and its relationship to human feelings found in the

*Joseph Moreno, MT-BC is the Director of Music Therapy at Maryville University, 13550 Conway Road, St. Louis, MO 63141.This article is dedicated to the memory of my dear father, William L. Moreno, who personally saved 85 people from the Holocaust.

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Holocaust. His whistling during the selections wasprobably not done in a taunting manner, but was morelikely just the simple pleasure that any person mightget from whistling a familiar melody as they worked.

Mengele was obsessed with carrying out pseudo-scientific medical experiments on sets of twins that hewas able to retrieve from the arriving transports.When one particular set of twins first met Mengele,he was whistling. Since the boys had both studiedclassical music in Hungary, they recognized the mu-sic as Mozart’s, and told this to Mengele. He was verypleased, and continued to enjoy discussing music withthem, even as he continued to use them as subjects forhis brutal medical experiments (Lagnado & Dekel,1992).

Perhaps the most incongruous role of music in theconcentration camps was that of the prisoner orches-tras. When the SS commanders of a camp woulddecide to form an orchestra, it was easy to recruitmusicians from the thousands of transports that ar-rived daily. For those who were recruited upon ar-rival, they were often surprised to imagine that theycould be utilized as musicians, as opposed to whatthey may have initially perceived as a period of laborin a work camp. And, for those who had been in thecamps for any length of time, who well knew thattheir inevitable fate would soon be death by exhaus-tion, starvation and gassing, the opportunity to beinvolved in a camp orchestra was a path to survival.Camp musicians, once accepted into a performinggroup, would generally be exempted from normalwork details, and had opportunities to have more andbetter food than the other prisoners. As long as theyplayed satisfactorily for the SS they had a chance tostay alive, literally “playing for time,” as expressed inthe title of the autobiographical book by FaniaFenelon (Fenelon & Routier, 1977), describing herexperiences in the women’s orchestra in Birkenau, apart of the Auschwitz camp complex.

Music in the Transports

Even in the cattle cars transporting the prisoners totheir final destinations, spontaneous music-makingoften arose as a way of trying to sustain morale. Atypical example of music as group support is the storyof Alfred Werner who was thrown into a train boxcarfor transport to Dachau. The men were packed sotightly together they could not move, and there wereno toilets. Werner noticed the despair around him, and

started singing Yiddish songs. The others joined inand the songs helped them to cope, at least for themoment (N. Mizrachi, personal communication,1994). A related experience is described by RomanMirga, a Gypsy survivor of a group that was sent toAuschwitz in the cattle cars (Ramati, 1985). Duringthe long trip, the Gypsy prisoners were suffering fromthirst. They had tried to persuade the train guard tobring them water, but he completely ignored them. Intheir despair, one woman began a Gypsy song “Fromvillage to village Gypsy girls are strolling . . . .” Otherwomen picked up the tune, and, noting his attention,began to direct their singing to the guard. He enjoyedtheir singing, applauded and asked for more. Theythen asked him again for water, and this time heobliged. The Gypsy’s music served a useful purpose,in a kind of exchange of music for water. For theguard, it seemed to be the musical reward that moti-vated his behavior, rather than any basic humanitarianconcern for the prisoners who were suffering fromextreme dehydration.

Music as Humiliation and Torment

The prisoner musical ensembles served differentfunctions at different times, pointing to the many par-adoxical roles that music played in the death camps.For example, in the Belzec camp, there was a six-member musical group, which was used both for en-tertainment of the SS men, as well as during theextermination of the transports. The musicians wereset up in the area between the gas chambers and theburial pits, and compelled to play during the transferof the corpses from the gas chambers to their graves(Arad, 1987). For arriving transports from the Polishcity of Zamosc, the orchestra was forced to play suchpopular German songs as “Everything Passes, Every-thing Goes By” (Reder, 1946). This music, whichmost people associate with life and happiness, washere used to torment and further humiliate the pris-oners underscoring the horror of their situation. In asimilar manner, before getting their food in the after-noon, prisoners from Belzec were forced to sing whilethe orchestra played and the other prisoners werebeing herded into the gas chambers (Arad, 1987).

In the Sobibor camp, the commandant would forcethe prisoners to sing a song that described how happythey were, how wonderful the food was, and so on.Prisoners who dared not to sing with sufficient “en-thusiasm” were whipped for this infraction (Arad,

4 JOSEPH MORENO

1987). A famous German-Jewish star of the musicalstage, Kurt Gerron, was forced to sing the song thathad made him famous, the “Canon Song” from theThreepenny Opera, while being marched to the gaschamber (Kater, 1992). In another example, prisonerworkers in the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz, as-signed to pulverize with wooden mallets the burnedbones just removed from the crematoria, were forcedby the SS to sing throughout the process (Nahon,1989). A group of Jewish prisoners, naked and in themiddle of the winter, were forced to enter a deepcanal that ran through the camp. Trembling with fearand cold, they were compelled, for the amusement ofthe SS guards, to dance and sing a specially composedsong with the words “We are the damned Jews whoare destroying the world” (Whissen, 1996). This tor-ment was continued for more than 2 hours, and thosethat survived were sent straight to their deaths. How-ever repugnant, these examples still reflect that theperpetrators intuitively recognized that music wassomething that the victims cherished, and with whichthey had positive associations, thereby enhancing itspotential for torment when forced upon them in theseterrible circumstances.

This perverted use of music to humiliate did notonly take place in the Nazi Holocaust. There havebeen instances in the recent war of genocide in theBalkans, where Serbian soldiers forced Muslim pris-oners to sing Serbian songs, simply as a form oftorment before they would kill them. For example, asdescribed by one survivor of a Serbian massacre, “Iremember one man on crutches who was ordered tosing Serbian songs. If any soldier didn’t like the waythe guy was singing, he would beat him with his owncrutches.” This man was then beaten to death (Stover,1997, p. 32).

Musical Censorship

Tacitly recognizing the positive powers of music,the Nazis banned the performance of the music of anyand all Jewish composers in Germany, as well as inthe occupied territories. If, for example, German au-diences had been left to continue to enjoy the music ofcomposers such as Mendelssohn, Mahler or Schoen-berg, or even Offenbach whose popular melodieswere actually removed from the hurdy-gurdys on thestreet, then they might have been forced to begin toaccept the Jews as people, and recognize their com-mon humanity. Performance, or even listening to jazz

music, associated with Afro-American and Jewishperformers and composers, was equally forbidden.

In the same manner, Jewish musical performersand conductors, who had formerly held high musicalposts in Germany, were all banned from public per-formance and from teaching posts long before thefinal solution was implemented. When violinist Szy-mon Laks auditioned for the men’s orchestra in Aus-chwitz, he played some passages from the Men-delssohn violin concerto. His auditioner was notmusically educated enough to recognize the piece. Ifhe had, Laks might have been rejected and immedi-ately sent to his death for presuming to play the musicof a Jewish composer (Laks, 1948).

Music As Deception

Towards the end of the war, the Nazis decided thatall prisoners in one group of camps would shortly bekilled. However, to distract these prisoners fromthinking about their end, or to contemplate the possi-bilities of resistance, the SS then strongly encouragedthe role of the orchestra to entertain the prisoners.This exemplifies the idea that the music was, in asense, intended to be “therapeutic,” distracting andproviding temporary comfort for the prisoners. But, ofcourse, this was a deceptive and malevolent “thera-py,” meant only to lull the prisoners into a false senseof complacency. As described by one survivor ofSobibor,

The SS men were interested in keeping up ourspirits, so that we should not be depressed andwe would work better. They organized concertsfor us, music was played and we were enter-tained. The purpose was that we should not feelthat we were doomed for extermination andthink about an uprising. (Arad, 1987, pp. 230–231)

In the end, almost all of these prisoners were killed.In Sobibor camp, the orchestra was designed to

create an illusion about the place, presumably to de-ceive and calm the arriving transports, and musicaccompanied the entire extermination process. Thesounds of Sobibor combined the “cries of the womenand children, shouts and wild laughter of the SS men,the noise of the working engines, and music played byan orchestra” (Arad, 1987, p. 228). The prisonerswere forced to sing as they marched to work, singing

5ORPHEUS IN HELL

as they would directly pass by their family, friendsand others being led to the gas.

Another well known deceptive use of music by theNazis was the playing of very loud music from loud-speakers. This was for the purpose of trying to coverup the sounds of guns in the mass shooting murders ofJews in the death camps, so as not to arouse prisoners’suspicions and lead to panic or rebellion. One descrip-tion reads,

As the Jews passed between the chain of reservepolicemen into the camp, music blared fromtwo loudspeaker trucks. Despite the attempt todrown out the other noise, the sound of steadygun fire could be heard from the camp. (Brown-ing, 1992, p. 138)

In the massacre in Babi Yar, 34,000 Jews were killedin 2 days in September 1941. The victims werepushed along a road leading to the edge of a deepravine where “Loud speakers bellowed dance melo-dies which drowned out the screams of the victims”(Berenbaum, 1997, p. 145).

In yet another form of deception through music,the Frenchwoman Claude Vaillant Courturier recalledhow the deportees were greeted at their arrival inBirkenau, prior to being sent directly to the gas.

To render their welcome more pleasant at thistime—June, July, 1944—an orchestra com-posed of internees—all young and pretty girls,dressed in white blouses and navy blue skirts—played during the selection on the arrival of thetrains, gay tunes such as “The Merry Widow,”the “Barcarolle” from “The Tales of Hoff-mann,” etc. They were then informed that thiswas a labor camp, and since they were notbrought into the camp they only saw the smallplatform surrounded by flowering plants. Natu-rally, they could not realize what was in storefor them. (Gilbert, 1985, p. 686)

As Lengyel (1995, p. 84) described it,

While the deportees were being disembarkedthe camp orchestra, inmates in striped pajamas,played swing tunes to welcome the new arriv-als. The gas chambers waited, but the victimsmust be soothed first. Indeed, the selections atthe station were usually made to the tune of

languorous tangos, jazz numbers, and popularballads.

One writer-musician recalled that at the time of hisarrival, “We were greeted in Auschwitz by a full,first-class symphony orchestra playing Richard Wag-ner’s Lohengrin” (Kater, 1992, p. 180).

Music as Distraction and Masking

Music was also used as a form of distraction andmasking for the SS themselves. For example, in Tre-blinka camp, the SS men organized an instrumentaltrio of prisoners who would perform for them duringmeals, in the evenings, at their parties and for specialguests. They also had them play to help drown out theunpleasant screams of those who were being whippedand prodded in their final run into the waiting gaschambers (Arad, 1987). In Buchenwald, at the occa-sions when public punishments by whipping tookplace, the prisoners would often scream and moan inpain. When this noise sufficiently annoyed the SSofficers, they would order the band to play a march,and in one instance, an officer even placed an operasinger by the whipping rack to sing operatic arias, tocover up the sounds made by those being tortured(Kogan, 1980).

The Prisoner Orchestras

A well known Jewish conductor of cafe orchestrasin Warsaw, Arthur Gold, was pulled at the last mo-ment from the line to the gas chambers, naked andfreezing, and recruited to organize a full scale pris-oner orchestra in Treblinka. There was no shortage ofmusical instruments available in the camps, as thesewere taken from those who arrived in the transports.Gold also developed a jazz ensemble, and a mixedchoir of men and women. The orchestra, completewith specially created band uniforms, was expected topresent elaborate music revues with prisoner singersand other performers, and also became involved aspart of the daily prisoner roll calls. On these occa-sions, there were punishments and selections, all ac-companied by the orchestra. At the end of the roll call,the prisoners were forced to sing the “Treblinka An-them” that Gold had been made to compose, beforethey were dismissed (Kogan, 1980).

What of the mentality of the SS, those whose dailywork revolved around the direct overseeing of thekilling of thousands of people a day, for years on end,

6 JOSEPH MORENO

but who could at the same time genuinely enjoy themusic that they heard? This was not only martialmusic, aggressively supporting a militaristic and sa-distic mentality, which would perhaps have beenmore understandable. Rather, the SS often chose tohear sentimental music that could move them to tears.For example, one SS officer in the Birkenau campalways requested orchestral performances of Schu-mann’s “Reverie,” a beautiful and sentimental piecethat he enjoyed, and particularly after a hard day ofselections and gassing (Fenelon & Routier, 1977).There is no reason to suppose that the musical enjoy-ment of SS men such as this individual was superfi-cial, or less than that of any other music lovers. Forthe SS, one might say that this music was their ther-apy. The music that the orchestras played was oftenmusic they had specifically asked for, the music theyloved. The music relaxed them, and the camp officerseven took a certain pride in the quality of “their”prisoner orchestras. And yet, the music apparently didnot humanize them in any significant way to feelingsof compassion towards those whom they murdered ona daily basis. Perhaps the music somehow supportedtheir denial, distracting them from their own behaviorand the reality of what was before them. The musicseemed to sedate rather than stimulate their misgiv-ings, as one might expect in more normal circum-stances. Henry Rosner, a violinist, was compelled toplay for the Commandant Amon Goeth at parties andother social occasions at Plaszow camp in Poland.Often he would play for Goeth after one of his fre-quent killing sprees of prisoner victims. At his bed-side he played the German songs Goeth preferred,perhaps, as Rosner stated “to ease his conscience”(Brecher, 1994).

The SS did sometimes interact with “their” musi-cians in a different way than they did with the ordi-nary prisoners. They occasionally accorded them alimited level of civility and human regard, even whilethey were daily killing their fellow Jews, and saw noproblem in this bizarre kind of distinction. However,in the end, they had no reservations with regard to theeventual extermination of these same musicians whenthey were no longer needed (L. Van Weren, personalcommunication, 1995).

In “Music in Therapy” in the chapter, “Man andMusic,” the author stated that, “Music is one of thoseareas of organization that stands at or very near theapex of man’s humanness” (Gaston, 1968, p. 12).Gaston seems to suggest that music can have a hu-manizing effect, but this was obviously contradicted

in the Holocaust experience. Music may have thepotential to reach and sensitize human feelings, butonly in a context in which it is specifically directed inthat way, as in some music therapy practice, and withreceptive listeners. In the Holocaust, the positive po-tentials of this aspect of music were so abused that allsuch norms became irrelevant. Further, the Holocaustamply demonstrated that musically-induced humanefeelings can be neatly compartmentalized, with senti-ment and nostalgia apparently comfortably co-exist-ing with denial and indifference to the suffering ofothers.

The most well-known book description about theexperience of the prison orchestras is Fania Fenelon’s“Playing For Time” (Fenelon & Routier, 1977) abouther experiences in performing in the women’s pris-oner orchestra in the Birkenau extermination camp.Fenelon describes how she received word that theywere seeking musicians to be part of a newly formedprisoner orchestra, for which she volunteered. It isdifficult to even try to imagine the level of intimida-tion of that kind of a musical audition, so typical ofthe Holocaust musical context. That is, if you aresuccessful—you live, if not—you die. Having been apianist and cabaret singer in France before her impris-onment, Fenelon managed to successfully sing andaccompany herself in an aria from Puccini’s MadameButterfly that was requested, and therefore managedto save her life.

The primary role of the prisoner orchestras in Aus-chwitz was to play German military marches out-doors. These were performed for the prisoner workdetails as they marched to work in the morning andthen returned again at the end of the day (Laks, 1948).This martial music helped to create a sense of orderand discipline within the camp for the SS command-ers. Again, the incongruity is horrifying. That is, thecontrast between the agony of the slave laborers whowere compelled to parade to work to the musicalaccompaniment of lively marches, while they werestarving and suffering, barely managing to stay alive.The prisoners were often forced to attempt to marchin rhythmic cadence, even when many of them couldbarely walk.

Most could survive only a few months at best, untilthey too would be gassed, and then replaced by otherable-bodied prisoners from the next arriving transport.The music, selected by the SS, probably meant littleor nothing to the prisoners under those conditions. Ithas even been suggested that the music, with itscheerful demeanor, may have even further demoral-

7ORPHEUS IN HELL

ized the prisoners and made their lot that much moredifficult (Laks, 1948). As expressed by one survivor“Listening to them play was heartbreaking. It re-minded us so much of normal life . . . the life thatother people still led” (Lagnado & Dekel, 1992, p.62). In fact, some prisoners cursed and swore at theorchestra members since they had privileged posi-tions, and would not share the fate of the others.

Primo Levi (1960), the writer-survivor, wrote thatyears later, his blood would freeze in his veins whenhe would hear or remember some of those marchingtunes, and he would become aware once more of howlucky he was to have escaped death in Auschwitz.Levi also described the execution of one prisoner whohad been part of an attempted sabotage in Birkenau. Aceremonial hanging took place in the center of thecamp, with hundreds of prisoners forced to witnessthe event, which was accompanied by a band perfor-mance (Levi, 1960).

Survivors of the women’s orchestra talk about thehorrors of having to perform marches for the emaci-ated prisoners going to work, playing with the back-ground of the smoke and smell of the crematoria, andin sight of the arriving transports. However, the hoursthat the orchestra members spent in the barracks forrehearsals were periods of time when the music didhave some genuine therapeutic value for them (H.Tichauer, personal communication, 1995).

The women’s orchestra was principally conductedby a famous European violinist, Alma Rose´, a nieceof the composer Gustav Mahler. She conducted theorchestra with dedication and discipline, and effec-tively kept herself and the other orchestra membersalive for several years. On some occasions the orches-tra played for the sick in the infirmary, to distractthem. However, these same patients for whom theyplayed in the morning, would inevitably be gassed inthe afternoon. Those patients, although sometimesmoved by the music, would typically find it too dif-ficult to bear, and would scream at the musicians andask them to leave and let them die in peace. However,some prisoners did get some positive feelings fromthe orchestra concerts,“ . . . citing the music as one ofthe only elements of beauty in their circus ofdeath . . . a reminder that there still was somethingsuch as family, home and artistry outside Auschwitz”(R. Newman, personal communication, 1995).

In New York, this writer interviewed Yvette Len-non (personal communication, 1993), a Greek-Jewishwoman who had played in Alma Rose´’s orchestra.Yvette initially played accordion, and later her place

in the orchestra became threatened because a secondand better accordionist had arrived. She was thenencouraged by her sister, and by Rose´, to play thestring bass which was a needed instrument in theorchestra. She didn’t know any bass, so it was actu-ally arranged for a bass player from the men’s orches-tra to be taken over to the women’s camp to give hera series of bass lessons—a strange example of musiceducation in Auschwitz.

Szymon Laks, a violinist, was a survivor and con-ductor of the Auschwitz men’s orchestra, who laterpublished his memoirs (Laks, 1948). Laks addressedthe contradictions inherent in the role of music in thecamps, as he asked how, “. . . music—that most sub-lime expression of the human spirit—also becameentangled in the hellish enterprise of the extermina-tion of millions of people, and even took an activepart in this extermination” (Laks, 1948, p. 5). In gen-eral, Laks thought that the music, if it helped anyone,it helped the musicians, who didn’t have to endurehard labor and ate a little better than the others. Forthe rest, he believed the music had little value. For theordinary prisoners, music was a luxury that for themost part, they could not begin to appreciate in thatcontext.

Shoshona Kalisch (personal communication,1995), a Hungarian Jew who spent some years atAuschwitz, spoke about how there would sometimesbe informal singing in the barracks, where the pris-oners would sing their national songs to each other,happy as well as sad songs, which she and others havestated served as a kind of therapy and sustenance forthem. Alec Ward (Gilbert, 1996, p. 61) was a teenageprisoner in Flossberg camp. Enduring physical brutal-ity and starvation, he remembered his friend, Artek,“who helped me enormously to keep up my moralethere. My friend had a most wonderful voice and veryoften we would sing together to while away our pain-fully hungry time.” In another example, when askedwhy she was constantly singing in the barracks, oneprisoner replied, “Manci, I am so hungry: when I singI don’t feel it so much” (Brecher, 1994, p. 12).

Lex Van Weren (personal communication, 1995)is a trumpet player and violinist who played in theAuschwitz orchestra. He described how the orchestraoften played during the time that the prisoners werebeing led into the gas chambers. Obviously, none ofthose prisoners survived, so there is no way to knowif the music provided them with some level of mo-mentary security. Those who were waiting to begassed, but were uncertain of their fate, were not sure

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if they were being led into a shower and delousingroom, as they were told, or if it was something moreominous. They were anxious, and did not understandwhat was happening to them. Van Weren felt that itwas certainly possible that the music did provide themwith a false sense of momentary security, again on thelevel of a brutally deceptive kind of “therapy.”

He recalled the Commandant of Auschwitz/Birkenau, Franz Hossler, a music lover, and for whomhe played his favorite numbers, like “Bei Mir Bist duSchon” (“To Me You Are Beautiful”), “Alexander’sRagtime Band,” and other popular music selections.Van Weren describes how Hossler would, at suchtimes, speak to him about some of the normal thingsin life, of his wife and children and other ordinarysubjects. In a very limited way, for brief periods oftime, the music would humanize him in his relation tothe performers. But, this certainly did not extend tohis view of his role in the daily mass murders.

Louis Bannet was another Dutch trumpet player, ajazz musician who survived through performing in theAuschwitz prisoner orchestra (Axelrod, 1989). Play-ing in an ensemble for two years, he eventually foundhimself in the terrible position of playing while hesaw his own mother arrive in a transport. Bannetdescribes some of the usual scenes of musical humil-iation, such as when a prisoner escaped, and was latercaught and killed. The killers then put the dead bodyin a chair, and forced the musicians to look as theyplayed, to serve as a kind of deterrent.

Perhaps the most horrific description of a musicalaudition from the Holocaust was that experienced byShony Alex Braun (1985). After having initially spentsome time in Auschwitz, he was later transferred toDachau. Braun had been a violin prodigy in Romaniabefore the war, and was only 13 at the time of hisimprisonment. He had spent his first year in thecamps as an ordinary prisoner worker, and had nooccasion to play his instrument.

After several days in Dachau, he had reached hislimits, and was barely surviving. At that point, an SSofficer entered his barrack with a violin in hand, andoffered food to any prisoner who could play to hissatisfaction. Braun volunteered, along with two oth-ers. As Braun describes it, the violin was first handedto the oldest prisoner, Feher, a man in his forties whohad been a famous violin virtuoso. He began by play-ing Bach, and according to Braun he played superbly,but apparently not to the SS officer’s taste. He sig-naled the capos and “One took the violin out of Fe-her’s hands, while another picked up a thick iron pipe

and smashed his head with such tremendous force thathis skull cracked open. Blood and brains splatteredthe room. He died instantly” (Braun, 1985). The vio-lin was than handed to the next prisoner, a man ofabout 25, who was understandably so shocked that hecouldn’t play, and he too was beaten to death.

Without any opportunity to defer, Braun wasobliged to play next. He had planned to play someworks of Kreisler or Dvorak, but in that bloodiedroom, and in terror, his mind went blank and he stoodfrozen for several seconds. He saw the capo againreaching for the pipe to crash his skull, and he knewhe was about to be killed. Braun had never yet playeda full-sized violin, hadn’t played for a year, and hisfingers felt too weak to depress the strings. And yet,by some kind of inspiration, and a lucky intuition ofthe kind of music the officer would be likely to relateto, he began to play the “Blue Danube Waltz” ofJohann Strauss. To this music the officer respondedpositively, and the capo picked up his guitar to ac-company him. This encounter gave Braun a new rolein which he was eventually able to entertain the SS inexchange for food, providing the margin of strengththat enabled him to survive until his liberation.

The mentality of the officer, capable of such ex-treme brutality, and yet fully able to take pleasure ina Strauss waltz at the same time, remains as one moreparadoxical example of the distorted values and emo-tional compartmentalization that prevailed in the Ho-locaust. One can refer to psychological concepts suchas splitting dissociation, denial, reaction-formation,and so on, in attempting to understand these behav-iors. However, the extreme nature of such actionsexceeds the boundaries of our usual understanding.

German Musicians and the Holocaust

What about German musicians who had the oppor-tunity to play in and around the death camps? Didtheir prior musical experiences somehow sensitizethem to the suffering of the prisoners to a greaterdegree than that of the ordinary SS men? Apparentlynot.

On the night before a planned mass murder ofthousands of Jews in Poland by German Police Bat-talion 101, one officer remembered, “On this eveningan entertainment unit of the Berlin police—so calledwelfare for the front—was our guest.” (“Welfare”here apparently meaning a kind of sedative musictherapy to help suppress whatever misgivings the of-ficers might have had in relation to their daily killing.)

9ORPHEUS IN HELL

He continued, “This entertainment unit consisted ofmusicians and performers. The members of this unithad likewise heard of the pending shooting of theJews. They asked, indeed even emphatically begged,to be allowed to participate in the execution of theJews. This request was granted by the battalion”(Browning, 1992, p. 112). Equipped with guns pro-vided by the battalion, the musicians formed theirown firing squads: even their prior lifetime experi-ences with music did not sensitize them against thishorror and brutality.

Doctor Schoenfelder, a German physician whospecifically instructed the men of Police Battalion 101in the techniques of killing Jews, was remembered byone member of the unit, a violinist, that “he played theaccordion marvelously and did so with us frequently.”The men of the battalion enjoyed musical afternoonsin the city of Meidzyrzec (Poland), a “site of theirmost frequent and largest killing operations” (Gold-hagen, 1996, p. 267).

Music in Theresienstadt

Among the concentration camps, one camp wasdifferent from all the rest and that was the Theresien-stadt camp in Czechoslovakia (Berenbaum, 1993).This was the one concentration camp that was de-signed by the Nazis to serve as a “model” camp forpropaganda purposes. It was created in response topressures from the International Red Cross and otherorganizations, in an attempt to dispel any rumors thatprisoners in the concentration camps were beingabused. In Theresienstadt, the prisoners were encour-aged to develop an active community and culturallife. As there were many talented musicians and com-posers in Theresienstadt, a vital musical culturethrived there. At the same time, all the performersknew well enough that they lived under the shadow ofdeath, and that their relatively comfortable existencecould be destroyed at any moment. They knew thatthey could, and probably would ultimately be trans-ported to their deaths in Auschwitz. In fact, almost allthe prisoners in Theresienstadt met this tragic end.

There were many notable and highly accomplishedJewish-Czech musicians in Theresienstadt. These in-cluded Gideon Klein, the talented pianist-composer,the conductor Rafael Schacter, and the composersViktor Ullmann, Pavel Hass and Hans Krasa. Thescope of the musical life in Theresienstadt was ex-traordinary under the circumstances. Theresienstadtsupported four concert orchestras, several small en-

sembles for popular music, as well as chamber musicensembles, solo recitals, choral music performancesand even an active jazz ensemble (Karas, 1985).

Hans Krasa wrote a wonderful children’s opera,“Brundibar,” in Theresienstadt. This is a happy andbuoyant piece, melodic and charming, which servedas a perfect performance vehicle to deceive the ob-servers from the International Red Cross Committee,and was also highly popular with the Theresienstadtprisoners. Tickets were extremely hard to come by inthe prison community, and “Brundibar” had a run of55 performances. The opera also had a great deal ofsymbolic meaning. For the prisoners, the childrenseemed to represent some hope for the future, and thestory line symbolized the ultimate triumph of goodover evil. The sad reality is that the children whoperformed in the opera, the orchestra players, as wellas the composer, and most of those prisoners whoheard and enjoyed these performances ended theirlives in the death camp at Auschwitz.

Although the music of the best Czech composersfrom Theresienstadt is now of special historical inter-est because of the circumstances of its creation, it isalso recognized as a repertoire of real musical valueregardless of its source. However, listening to thismusic today, it is difficult to disassociate it from thepoignancy of the time and place in which it wasconceived.

Even Adolph Eichmann enjoyed attending musicalevents in Theresienstadt when he had business there.These included performances of Verdi’s Requiem thatthe prisoners presented, both tragically as a requiemfor themselves, as well as ironically, a Christian re-quiem for Jews, used to convey their full awareness oftheir circumstances to their captors. Predictably, theseperformances had no effect whatsoever on Eich-mann’s continuing policies of deportation and exter-mination (Karas, 1985).

Music in the Ghettos

One cannot consider the role of music in the con-centration camps, without also giving consideration tothe role of music in sustaining hope, culture, andgroup solidarity for those Jews imprisoned in theghettos. In a sense, life in the ghettos was similar tolife in Theresienstadt, although the conditions weregenerally far worse from the strictly physical point ofview. The common element of stress for those livingin the ghettos was the constant quota of forced dailydeportations to the death camps. Yet, as in Theresien-

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stadt, musical life flourished in the ghettos. As onesurvivor put it, “The song was the only truth. TheNazis could take everything away from us, but theycould not take singing from us. This remained ouronly human expression” (Flam, 1992, p. 1). Whileperforming in the prisoner orchestras in camps likeAuschwitz was a way of playing for physical survival,the songs sung in the ghettos became a kind of singingfor spiritual survival, a form of music therapy.

As in Theresienstadt, there was a rich cultural ac-tivity within the Lodz ghetto. It included a variety ofentertainments that had their origins in prewar Jewishcultural life, such as symphonic concerts, as well asstreet music and other less formal music-making(Flam, 1992).

Many ghetto survivors have recalled singing athome as a kind of domestic music therapy activity. Asone survivor described it,

We did not give up singing, it was singing forits own sake. We sang all kinds of songs. Ac-tually, we did not have any good news to talkabout. We tried to forget the bad times, so wesang. It worked wonderfully! I think that wasone of the things which helped us to survive.(Flam, 1992, p. 156)

Music and Memory

Y Violetta was an Italian Jew in Birkenau. Duringthe first days there, the prisoners had no idea whathad happened to the people they no longer saw.One day, while they were working, the SS womenguards ordered them, “Italian women, sing.” Thewomen started to sing the popular sentimental Ital-ian song, “Mama” (Bixio, 1943), in the hopes thattheir parents might hear them and know that theywere alive. Then the Polish girls laughed andasked them if they wanted the mamas to come outof the chimneys from which they saw the smoke.And that was when they realized what was hap-pening to the people whom they no longer saw (G.Robbins, personal communication, 1994).

Y Miriam describes this memory,

When we went out of the camp, we were alwaystold to sing so that if there were trains arrivingon the tracks, the people would hear singing( . . . no doubt to provide them with a falsesense of security, again a deceptive use of mu-sic). One day we were asked to sing and we saw

cattle wagons lined up on the tracks. We sawlittle faces peeping through the barred windowsof the cattle wagons. We knew that they wereour Jewish children. We felt utter helplessnessand despair. We could do nothing, we couldonly murmur to ourselves and hang our heads inshame that there was a world outside this campthat knew about this, and allowed it to happen,and that there was no help coming from any-where. I shall never forget this sight. (G. Rob-bins, personal communication, 1994)

Y Roman Mirga, an Auschwitz survivor, was the sonof the Gypsy violinist, Dmitri Mirga. He remem-bered listening to his father play daily in a Gypsystring orchestra, accompanying the endless lines ofprisoners on their last walks to the gas chambers(Ramati, 1985). For a period, the Gypsy camp wasspared, but in the end it too was set for extermi-nation. Mirga remembered the night that first theGypsy children were sent to the gas, hearing theirown Gypsy music in their last moments. Theywere later followed by the rest of the camp, in-cluding his own family. And, he especially re-membered the time when the music that he hadbeen hearing every day for a year suddenlystopped forever, as all the orchestra members, in-cluding his own father, were sent to their death inthe gas.

Y Shortly after arrival in Birkenau in 1943, JacquesStroumsa, a Greek-Jewish violinist, responded to acall in his barracks for accomplished musical in-strumentalists. Handed a violin, he asked the blockchief what he wanted to hear, such as Mozart,Haydn or Beethoven? Told to play whatever hewanted, he tuned the violin, began to play, andcontinued for 20 minutes without pause. In thecontext of Birkenau, surrounded by his newly ar-rived prisoner friends from Thessaloniki, Greece,the music had a dramatic impact. All were filledwith painful emotions, the music being so associ-ated with their former lives as free men, and instark contrast to their present circumstances.

Stroumsa was then escorted to the “conservatory”barracks, were he was appointed as first violinist ofthe Birkenau orchestra (Stroumsa, 1993). He laterbecame known as “The Fiddler of Auschwitz,” and 50years after his liberation, in 1995, he returned to Aus-chwitz to play his violin there, once again, this time aspart of a Holocaust memorial ceremony.

11ORPHEUS IN HELL

Musical Transcendence: Present and Past

Transcending the Present

In an incident of music briefly helping to escapeterrible circumstances, Olga Lengyel in Auschwitzhad been working at the task of sorting the luggagethat had been taken from a group of American victimsthat had just been killed. In one suitcase, she and herfellow prisoners found some phonograph records.Hungry for music, they began to play one on a por-table phonograph that was also in the luggage. Therecording was of “Silent Night,” sung by BingCrosby, and the prisoners were transfixed. A Germanguard heard the music and rushed into the room anddestroyed the record. Lengyel (1995, p. 102) recalled“For a few moments the American crooner had helpedus to forget our predicament . . . ,” reflecting one ofthe only sure and safe ways of “escaping” from Aus-chwitz.

Transcending the Past

Zvi Klein, a survivor, was one from the hundredsof sets of young twins who endured the sadistic med-ical experiments carried out by Joseph Mengele (Lag-nado & Dekel, 1992). After his liberation, Klein grewup to become a tortured man, with endlessly recurringand terrifying memories of Mengele and the traumasto which he had been subjected. He traveled the worldas a sailor, in a driven way, but remained unable toescape his obsessive dreams of the death camp. Hemovingly describes how, during a stop in New York,he had wandered into a bar that had a band featuringLouis Armstrong. He was there for only an hour be-fore he had to leave, but he had become fully engagedin the music. He never forgot that hour, and remem-bered it in a way that reflects the most positive powerof music to assist us in transcending painful experi-ences.

Yes, I was happy then! In fact, never in my lifehave I been as happy as during the hour I spentinside that dive on the West Side. Because forone whole hour, I actually managed to forgetAuschwitz and Dr. Joseph Mengele . . .. (Lag-nado & Dekel, 1992, p. 27)

Conclusions

What does all of this teach us? What is the rele-vance of these contradictory roles of music in theHolocaust to us as therapists today?

For one, it demonstrates how deeply important mu-sic is to people in general, and particularly for peoplein crisis. For example, when the camp prisoners hadeven a modicum of quality of life beyond total star-vation and suffering from disease, they sought outmusic for their comfort. The ghetto songs providedhope and comfort, as well as the courage for resis-tance. Music in the ghettos provided a way of sus-taining a rich culture and sense of community, andperhaps a fleeting sense of well being. Those march-ing into the gas chambers singing such songs as “Ha-tikva” in their last moments of life affirmed theirshared identity and faith through group solidarity, aspontaneous moment of supportive group music ther-apy, as with those prisoners singing together in thebarracks for mutual comfort.

In these examples, we see how people, in literallythe most extreme possible situations, seek out music.When it is not provided, people will often create theirown music therapy, and it is clear that music thera-pists are dealing with a human need that is basic andessential.

In a more organized form, Herbert Zipper, a Jew-ish-Viennese musician imprisoned in Dachau in 1938,managed, on his own, to create a secret volunteerstring ensemble of fourteen players. He composedoriginal music for this group, and they gave a series ofclandestine concerts in an unused latrine. For theplayers, as well as for the audience of 20–30 prison-ers, these concerts realized a sense of “reaffirmingsomething worthwhile” and of “exerting some free-dom of the will,” in otherwise totally dehumanizingcircumstances (Cummins, 1992, p. 86).

Judith Isaacson (1991), a Hungarian Jew in Aus-chwitz, fell asleep lying in the mud after an intermi-nable pre-dawn roll call, in cold and rainy weather.She was later awakened by a warm rain, and thespontaneous singing of several thousand women pris-oners, all joining in an anonymously created song:“Above me weeps the sky—Darkly, I wing, Ifly—My loved ones are waiting at home . . .” (p.76).She joined in this singing, both desperate and hopefulat the same time, and later said that no music had evermoved her more.

In the end then, how can we begin to understandthe men and women of the SS, murderers who couldstill be touched by music, and saw no contradictionsin this?

One idea may be that any human being, no matterhow evil or corrupt, still has the capacity to feelmusic. Many ordinary people can be cruel in small

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ways and enjoy music. In the Holocaust, where wefind the ultimate expressions of human cruelty, eventhe worst perpetrators did not lose their feeling formusic either—perhaps this is only a question of de-gree.

Once a person has reached that level of criminality,to give up one’s defenses would be an overwhelm-ingly self-destructive confrontation. The individualwould then be obliged to move from a position ofself-esteem, believing in the rightness of their actions,to a totally reversed position, that one was, in fact, amonster of evil. One can readily understand that manywould avoid taking such a threatening psychic leap.

As with any other people, music for the SS couldstir their sentimental feelings for love of home, fam-ily, country, and so on, but it did not break down thepower of their internal defense systems.

Therapy and the Holocaust

One implication for music as therapy is the poten-tial of utilizing music of the Holocaust period as a partof music therapy interventions in work with remain-ing Holocaust survivors. For those who survived, butrepressed many feelings because they still remain toopainful, music and imagery work, with music of theHolocaust period as a background stimulus, couldassist them in the process of associative recall on adeep emotional level. This experience could helpthem to directly confront and work through such feel-ings as fear, grief over the loss of loved ones, anger,guilt at having survived when so many others per-ished, loss of confidence in ones personal autonomy,loss of trust in others and so on. This same principlewould also apply to other more recent victims oftorture and related traumatic abuses in which musicassociated with their experiences could assist the vic-tims to fully come to terms with their feelings, andbegin a process of personal reintegration.

Even today, Holocaust survivors living in Israelhave been unable to accept the music of the anti-Semitic composer, Richard Wagner, in the concertprograms of the Israel Philharmonic orchestra. ManyEuropean Jews were led to an association betweenWagner’s music and the Nazi movement, by exposureto his music in Nazi parades, rallies, newscasts and soon. As a result, they were negatively conditioned toconnect his music with their Holocaust period expe-riences. This demonstrates just how powerful andlong-enduring such musical associations can be, aprinciple well known to music therapists.

It would be heartening to conclude, with the Ho-locaust now more than 50 years behind us, that theworld has learned from these experiences, and is nowa more peaceful and better place. Unfortunately, wedo not have to look any further than the recent wars inRwanda and the Balkans, to see that genocide andviolence and ethnic hatreds are still very much withus. Neo-Nazi groups still persist, with their own mu-sic, a kind of rock-hate genre, with lyrics that supporttheir particular belief systems. “Bound for Glory” isan anti-Semitic white power rap group in the UnitedStates. In their song “A Call to Arms,” these are thelyrics:

Zionist illusions, state of confusionsAre decaying away my mind.Feelings of hate, can’t get it straightAm I the only one of my kind?Massive inflation by the radical infestationHas turned our streets to decay.Racial domination, swift terminationHas become the only way.Close the border, start the New Order.Gather your guns, it is time to fight, a call to

arms!(Suall, 1994, p. A16)

Even when music becomes misused to supportnegative ideologies, its power to unite and inspireremains the same.

If there is a positive message to be learned from allthis, it may be that the power and significance ofmusic in human culture has essential meaning withinthe human psyche. We cannot blame music for hatred.Music doesn’t create hatred, it can only support a hatredthat is already there. Although the elimination of racismand other bigotry is beyond our capacity as therapists,and has its origins in the most formative social, familialand cultural experiences, music therapists do have theprivilege to work with a medium so basic, pervasiveand universal that when guided by the highest ethicalstandards, has the potential of assisting people in be-coming the best of which they are capable.

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