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(RAIN PATTERS)
POLLACK: Myself and all the others
realised...
this is a place
where...
hate... and terror
were beyond anything we had seen.
We were so fearful.
Constant fear.
We were terrified.
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BUILDS)
GEYER: Auschwitz was the largest death camp
the world has ever seen.
Around 1.1 million people perished here.
Of those, one million were Jewish,
70,000 were Polish,
and 21,000 were Romani and Sinti people.
Auschwitz was also home to at least six orchestras,
formed of prisoners and commissioned by the Nazis.
This music was part of the infrastructure of the camp.
Music was weaponised.
I'm a classical composer and conductor.
For the last eight years,
I've been piecing together the fragments
of the music manuscripts that remain.
Hidden in the notes, there are many examples
of where musicians rebelled...
with secret performances
and weaving forbidden melodies into concerts.
All of these stories are very special.
I've been trying to understand
what the music would have sounded like in Auschwitz
so that we can finally hear this music,
in some cases, for the first time in 80 years.
EDITH: We were standing outside in front of that gate,
and there was that famous music which used to play in Auschwitz.
Practically everybody cried, we never cried.
You suddenly remembered, "Oh, there was a world
which we used to know."
# MOZART: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Mvt.1 #
(MUSIC FADES, ENDS)
I've been to Auschwitz ten times,
and on each trip,
here for several days. Hiya, Leo.
Good to see you again. Please come in.
Thank you. 'So, a very long time.'
Please sit down. Thank you.
The collection department in Auschwitz houses
all kinds of different artefacts
that relate to the camp's existence,
and this includes artworks, musical instruments,
and also music manuscripts.
Thank you very much, Jan, thank you.
I first came to the collections department eight years ago
and I had a conversation with one of the archivists,
and he mentioned to me in a somewhat offhand way
that there were some music manuscripts
in the collections department. I couldn't believe
that such a thing existed.
This is an example of one of the parts in the archive,
and we can see it's very damaged
and the title is missing, the instrument is missing,
but this is one of the pieces of the jigsaw.
And I know because of the range of the part
that this is a violin two part.
None of these manuscripts are complete,
so the challenge for me as a composer
is to try and, authentically as possible,
complete the gaps.
It becomes even more complicated
to make the arrangements because you didn't have
the same players day in and day out because tragically
the musicians were dying.
And so I've had to research
testimonies, refer to photos,
to try and understand exactly who was there at that time
to get to the sound
as purely as possible.
Following my conversations with survivors,
one of the most important things for them
is that we inherit the truth.
Music is an abstract artform,
and therefore music can
speak beyond words.
And with something so enormous
and of such gravity
as the Holocaust,
actually music is helpful, I think,
i-in a way in which we can understand and deal with it.
(BELL RINGING DISTANTLY)
HORNICK: People that had been locked up in those terrible carriages
were gasping for air.
Suddenly we heard this terrible clinking
and they...
took off the chains, and the doors opened.
Well, the sight that greeted us
was beyond anybody's imagination.
Dogs were barking viciously,
soldiers marching up and down
with guns on their shoulders,
and there was just a general sense of panic.
(BELL RINGING DISTANTLY)
When transport arrived,
the symphony orchestra was playing.
I saw them playing when we arrived,
and I couldn't imagine, I never heard playing so beautifully,
because the place where I come from,
there was no symphony orchestra.
So, when such a beautiful music,
well, you don't think of something bad.
GEYER: The women's orchestra was based in the largest camp,
Auschwitz II Birkenau...
in barracks that were next to the main railway
where most people arrived.
They often performed in view of the railway
and the nearby crematoria.
We know from survivor testimonies
that Eine kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart
was one of the pieces that the women's orchestra performed.
I've managed to research
what instruments were available at the time,
and that comprises of a very unbalanced orchestra
of very bizarre instruments,
and this creates a very, very distinctive sound.
# MOZART: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Mvt.1 #
It's difficult to imagine a more macabre setting
for music-making.
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
HORNICK: Mothers and children were taken to the left.
We did look back and we saw our mother.
She had a spotted scarf on her head
and we waved to her.
We didn't see our little brothers because he was, um...
um, they were small and in the crowd they were lost.
We were being...
directed through...
the main gate.
The smell was terrible,
and we didn't know what it was.
And this sort of grey, greasy ash falling down.
We were taken in to block 14...
and we were crying, my sister and I,
and there was a lady there who was fed up with us crying.
Well, she must have been already seasoned,
she'd been there a while.
She said, "Don't be stupid, you aren't going to see your mother.
Can you see that smoke coming up
and all that dirty ash falling around us?
That's where your mother's gone."
PERL: Marching was a completely daily event.
But when you say marching, you visualise a nice
marching there but...
but, uh...
you're talking about crawling along rather than marching.
And quite a marching out,
uh, quite often...
it wasn't unusual for people never to return back.
ROSENBURG: Normally when you went out to work,
there was a 50-piece orchestra
playing and you were marching to that.
And, uh...
when you came back,
(SINGS)Bur-um-pum-pum-pum-pum
pum-pur-um, pum-pu-pum,
pu-pu-rum, bum-bu-bum, bum-bu-bum.
And you'd march,
no matter how tired you were.
As it came before the gate,
it was "Achtung, attention,
straighten out your lines,
count them."
And the kapot would march and yell,
commander number so-and-so,
54 people, 75 people,
and marching right through and being counted.
We knew we were gonna march out, we heard music,
"OK, well we're going to work again, what's gonna happen today?
Will I ever get back?"
I thought, "Hell is here
and there they're making music. Why, why?"
And that's how it was.
Arbeitslager Marsch by Henryk Krol is the only
example that we have of a march written by a prisoner.
And the story of this piece
was that he wrote it in Auschwitz,
and it was played many, many times when it was there.
A fellow prisoner was able to take the music from Auschwitz
and return it to Henryk Krol
after the war.
Today, we don't actually have the full score, but I've managed
to research what instruments were available at that time,
such as accordion and saxophone,
which we wouldn't usually expect in an orchestra.
It feels to me that there is a hidden message to this music,
and we can tell that from
the dissonance in the melodic lines and the countermelodies,
as well as a prolonged passage in the minor key.
This marching music is very difficult
because we know that this was the backdrop
to really unimaginable horrors.
(MUSIC FADES TO BACKGROUND)
KROL: It was bearable in the morning
when the prisoners still marched somewhat normal.
But in the afternoon, the sight was horrific.
As the concert master, I stood at the very edge of the orchestra,
so I had the closest view of the prisoners passing by.
I will never forget the day I had to watch
as the body of my friend was carried in.
Two prisoners were carrying him,
one at the front and one at the back,
and the ways his limbs hang down
only intensified the horror of the spectacle.
("ARBEITSLAGER MARSCH" CONTINUES)
JUHN: When we came back from work,
we had to march past
the orchestra which was playing, and...
people that were...
beaten to death or shot
were...
before the orchestra, displayed.
Dead people propped up on chairs.
We had to march past,
to take our hats off and look at them.
("ARBEITSLAGER MARSCH" CONTINUES)
(MUSIC SOFTENS)
(MUSIC FADES, ENDS)
(BIRDSONG)
I was 12 years and three months old.
We never had the luxury
of even...
thinking more than one day ahead.
They dehumanised us.
We're not humans anymore.
We went to this little room and there was a lady there.
She says, "You say you play music?"
I said, "Yes, the accordion."
She says, "Here, play something," she gave me an accordion.
I knew everything by heart,
so I play for her and she says, "Good."
They said that the Kommandant decided
to make an orchestra.
I say, "An orchestra here?"
Everybody who was on a special work,
like kitchen or musician
or people who work cleaning up, um, then they're...
they were all leaving separately from the other one,
and they had all more than we had.
They all had a little bit better of food.
WONTOR-CICHY: To stay healthy,
to stay clean,
to stay not exhausted,
was much easier in the orchestra
comparing to the other units.
But to be part of the orchestra,
uh, was not an easy, uh, story.
They have to take the exam;
basically play in front of the prisoner
who was appointed to be their conductor,
and they have to play, uh... play well.
A Romani violinist, he played the fiddle beautifully
without knowing how to read music at all;
a man with perfect pitch.
I was present when his transport arrived.
When he was stripped naked,
he cried and begs to be allowed to keep his violin.
He did not want to part with it under any circumstances.
He gave an extraordinary demonstration of his ability.
Completely naked, he played as if in a trance,
wringing sobbing tones from the fiddle.
This decided his immediate inclusion in the camp orchestra.
For Roma people,
music and dance and family
are probably the... the three most important things.
Taking his violin and his music
was just like taking his life.
This composition, it's written
in memory of Jakub Segar,
who was, just like myself,
an Eastern European violinist,
uh, violinist and musician
of, uh, Roma ethnicity.
We are standing at the Alte Judenrampe.
This must probably have been
the exact point where he and other victims
got off from the train.
The pain of... of his can be felt in the air, I think.
GEYER: Jakub Segar was one of the few Romani musicians
in the Auschwitz 1 Orchestra,
and I think the story of his recruitment is astonishing.
He was clearly one of the most gifted violinists,
with the ability to hear a melody once
and play it back perfectly.
And so in his honour,
I've written this solo violin piece,
drawing on Romani musical traditions.
This violin is an...
extremely special violin because, uh...
this violin was here in-in Auschwitz
in the... in the camp
and played by
one of the survivors
who was here in Auschwitz.
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
(BIRD CHIRPING)
MEYER: There were certain moments where we had to entertain the SS.
We played popular tunes
and we played potpourris,
we played waltzes, tangos.
Either they brought them from home and said could you play that for us,
and we would, or they were popular tunes
and we knew that they liked it.
The Nazis was going to come and visit us.
They come to have a rest after the killing that they did,
they're gonna have some music.
MAYER: Believe me, it was a fantastic, first class orchestra.
It was part of their, um...
enjoyment, the German's enjoyment,
to be sarcastic, to uh,
to give us extra pain, I-I felt.
GEYER: "Nie war Musik so shon" or "Never Has Music Been So Beautiful"
was requested by SS soldiers in Auschwitz.
This piece is an example
of one of the foxtrots popular in Nazi Germany.
To try and understand the full picture of this arrangement
that was made in Auschwitz, requires quite a lot
of musical detective work.
As well as referring to the manuscripts in the archive,
I also referenced recordings made in Nazi Germany
to recompose the missing gaps.
I think this piece is
the most difficult for us as musicians to perform,
because...
it's in many ways a beautiful piece of music, it's luscious.
We are playing in a style
similar to that in Nazi Germany,
so that has this sweet-sounding vibrato,
the sliding in the strings.
But we have to remember that this was a piece
that was performed for the SS on demand,
and many, many people did find this horrific at the time.
# CASIROLI: Nie War Musik So Shon #
(MUSIC FADES TO BACKGROUND)
The SS men were sitting there, you know,
comfortably,
drinking their beers or whatever,
and amusing themselves.
Bottles of beer were rolled in one after the other.
The corks from bottles of champagne
shot into the air with a bang,
and sausage and roast chicken steamed on the trays.
MARKSTEIN: They loved the music.
And I was standing there and I thought to myself
once the sun was shining...
and I said, "Where am I?
What's happening to us?
Where is God?
Where is God? Where was this? Where is the whole world?
Nobody cares about us, nobody gives a damn what is...
what is happening here?"
("NIE WAR MUSIK SO SHON" CONTINUES)
(MUSIC FADES, ENDS)
(CLOCK TICKING)
We were so fearful.
We were so obedient.
They're-They're just... (SIGHS)
fr-frightening...
frightening, some sort of...
some sort of dangerous...
wild and-and hateful people.
HORNICK: A miracle happened.
My mother's old assistant,
two older cousins,
were in block 16.
And she came to find us,
and um, we were terribly distressed,
and she managed to exchange with another two people.
I mean, to do that,
you could be whipped to death,
but she managed to exchange us
to her block, and really took care of us.
So, we were so very lucky.
I came out with my life.
To what do I owe this?
For me, there is no doubt
that I owe this to an unending series of miracles.
I was helped in this by music,
and so many times I had been told
that one could not survive by music.
One evening, I found lying on the ground
a crumpled and greasy piece of paper
covered with writing that attracted my attention.
It smelled of herring and God only knows what else,
but it was music.
Only the melody, written by hand but very legibly,
without harmonisation, without accompaniment.
The title at the top read
"Three Warsaw Polonaises of the 18th Century"
Author: "Anonymous."
On the greasy piece of paper that Szymon Laks found
was just a single melodic line,
and so Laks made the decision
to then orchestrate that for quartet.
Crucially, he didn't say what quartet he wrote it for.
When I looked at the instruments that I know
were available to Laks at that time,
for me it felt like a violin,
accordion, a clarinet,
and double bass seemed the most appropriate instruments
to bring out the nature of the music.
Given that this piece was an emphatic
presentation of Polish music,
it would have been forbidden,
which is why we know that Szymon Laks
performed this piece secretly.
# SZYMON LAKS: Warsaw Polonaise No.2 #
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
Nobody survived without luck, nobody.
But not everybody that had luck survived.
Well, I come from a family of 11
and the only one that survived was me and my brother, Alec.
Alec was two years older than me,
and I thank God
that without him being there,
I-I don't think I would have survived.
Most people survived in pairs...
and if they didn't have a brother or a sister,
they would find a friend to hang on to.
'Cause when you are in that sort of dire... position,
you try to live for each other.
MARKSTEIN: The crematorium worked full speed,
day and night.
Thick smoke with flames
that you could see and the smell, of burning human flesh.
And it was so nauseating.
We had it under our skin.
we couldn't get rid of it, not day and not night, never.
HORNICK: We came with the last transport of the Hungarian Jews,
and those crematoria
were going day and night on those transports.
Himmler, um, wanted...
as many burned as possible, and thousands...
thousands were burned in a day.
The gas chambers were very close to the orchestra.
You see, where we were, say if you walk
a block or two blocks at the most,
the gas chambers were there, and we could see them.
The women's orchestra performed very close to the crematorium.
Chopin's Tristesse Etude or Sadness Etude
was a arrangement that was made by Alma Rose,
the conductor of the women's orchestra.
There are no manuscripts that survived
from the women's orchestra, but one of the violinists remembered
intrinsic details of this performance and arrangement,
and I've been able to refer to her notes about this to the letter.
This piece was performed in the women's barracks
where they both rehearsed and lived,
and they performed this piece secretly
and very much for themselves.
I'm Jewish and, uh,
most of my family died in Auschwitz.
My, uh, great grandfather
and his wife and their two children,
um, they fled Belgium in 1940,
which is why I'm here. Um, but...
the eight brothers and sisters on either side,
uh, didn't leave,
and they were taken away by the Nazis
and taken to Auschwitz.
They all died.
Um, we've got photos at home
of little cousins,
and knowing that-that they didn't make it.
The song is about, um...
a woman who has a song within her, a beautiful song,
but then at the end she says,
but I don't want it in me anymore, so...
my interpretation is that
she wants to be able to express herself,
she wants to be able to perform it
and sing it, or for somebody to sing it.
But she can't express herself,
uh, because...
she's in Auschwitz.
I'm singing this piece
for all the people
that didn't survive Auschwitz,
including Alma Rose,
who wrote the piece.
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BEGINS)
(SINGS IN GERMAN)
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
(LEAVES RUSTLE GENTLY)
PERL: My brother, David, he was the eldest.
He was old enough, he was 22-years-old,
and he was old enough to go into the Sondercommando.
The Sondercommando are the people
who worked in the crematoria,
and they were kept separate to us.
The only way we knew that he was there is that we were...
we had a parcel of food thrown over the...
for the wire, the barbed wires,
and after a while it stopped.
And we never-never heard or seen him since.
But we found out that usually
they themselves used to be, uh,
liq-liquidated after three or four weeks.
The horror is just unimaginable.
WONTOR-CICHY: Sondercommando was a very special unit.
Young, healthy, most were Jewish.
They have to take the corpses
of the people murdered in the gas chamber
and carry them to crematorias, carry them for burning.
And they wanted to send a message outside
to try to inform the world
about the crime committed.
A camera was smuggled
into this very close area of Sondercommando...
and a few photographs were taken.
One of the photo they decided to take
is a little field
and some people standing;
standing around something what is on the ground:
corpses of people that were murdered
a few minutes before.
And they cannot be burned in crematorium
because the crematorium is either damaged
or is just too small
to burn all the bodies
of the people murdered in the gas chamber
within this period of time.
(UNEASY TONE)
The one thing I can never, ever forget is...
looking back and waving at our mother.
Yeah.
I will never forget how, after the memorable
mass execution of the prisoners from the Silesian transport,
which shook the entire camp,
Kopycinski sat down at the piano
and played Chopin's Revolutionary Etude.
It was summer, in the afternoon,
the windows of the music hall were wide open,
and the music could be heard not only throughout the camp,
but also in the SS-occupied buildings across the wire.
It took extraordinary courage to do something like that.
The piece Adam Kopycinski played was Chopin's Revolutionary Etude,
and you can understand why he made that decision.
That particular piece has been associated with Polish resistance
for many years before that point.
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
Music does have the ability
to speak beyond specific meaning,
and therefore
music can be very valuable as a way in
to try and engage with the Holocaust
and find the right emotion and feelings.
This is one of the most delicate manuscripts.
It's written in faded pencil.
And tucked inside... these pages
we will find something very special.
This was the manuscript
that set me on this path eight years ago.
This is an unsigned,
unfinished manuscript.
When I first saw it,
I had goosebumps down the back of my neck,
because the handwriting
is the exact same as mine.
And so I felt it was my duty to finish it.
We can tell it's a sketch
because we can see these rubbings out,
which shows that our composer
changed his mind as he was writing.
Importantly, also here at the end,
there's no double bar line, it's just a normal bar,
which means that the piece is not finished.
It is in fact a short score
for a much larger instrumentation.
A sketch for something bigger.
The title, at least we think,
is "Daremne Zale,"
and this is Polish
for "Futile Regrets."
This piece has been haunting me for eight years...
because I still don't know who it's by,
and the only clue...
is the handwriting itself.
(HUMS MELODY)
(CONTINUES HUMMING MELODY)
(HUMMING BEGINS TO FADE)
(HUMMING FADES, ENDS)
(LEAVES RUSTLE)
POLLACK: The Allied Forces were coming!
And lo and behold...
I feel a pair of hands...
a gentle pair of hands...
lifting me up...
and putting me in a waiting ambulance.
And it was warm...
with gentle voices.
If they spoke just German, no.
They spoke and said...
"Hold on."
I remember it so clearly.
The fact that we were given a dress
and a coat
and shoes,
that was a ray of hope
that we might survive...
by, um... by leaving Auschwitz.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
We'd pass for the last time by the buildings
we have walked past daily for years,
and suddenly, somewhere ahead a song rises;
a Polish song of course,
light-hearted and carefree.
And our dread of the guards fades.
Our sorrows melt away.
At Katowice Station,
the air echoed with a bugle call from St. Mary's Tower,
and Polish songs played by the Auschwitz Orchestra,
which was allowed to bring their instruments.
Placed in a single train car,
they played a farewell.
(SPEAKS POLISH)
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
I'm trying to find out who wrote the unfinished
musical sketch "Daremne Zale."
When I found it in the Auschwitz archives,
it was tucked into the first part of a 19th century
Polish operetta that had been copied out by hand.
(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) Just over there, straight.
I eventually tracked down the other half of the operetta
in the Polish National Library,
and more importantly,
the name of the copyist,
Mieczyslaw Krzynski .
We know from Krzynski's prisoner number
that he arrived in Auschwitz on the 17th of April 1942.
Krzynski was the deputy conductor
of the Auschwitz 1 Orchestra,
so not only was he making arrangements,
but he was also copying the various parts for all the players.
(SPEAKS POLISH)
My hunch is that Krzynski wrote Daremne Zale,
but to know for sure, I need to compare the writing
on the two manuscripts.
So, this is the...
the name of the operetta itself.
All we need now is the signature.
And here it is.
1935, so that's the date this was written,
before the war,
but most importantly, most interestingly, the signature:
"M. K."
And that stands for Mieczyslaw Krzynski.
So, one of the ways we can tell
who the author is from a manuscript
is the treble clef.
And every composer writes their treble clef differently.
So, if we compare these
to our unsigned and unfinished composition sketch...
there's a very striking similarity
between the two.
So, we can see that it has the same
swivel shape here,
and also the top of the treble clef here
doesn't have the circle that we would expect to see.
The other aspect to look at is
the notes themselves.
So, in many cases, such as here,
we can see that our composer has written
the notehead first,
and then somewhat hurriedly afterwards
has drawn the stem and then the bean.
And again this matches exactly
with that of the composition sketch in the archive.
The similarity is just so striking
that it tells us that this really must be by the same hand.
My brother, Mieczyslaw Krzynski,
was a professor of music and a composer
who wrote and composed the missing pieces
for the various instruments
that were not available. He played a tuba
in the brass and the violin in the string orchestra.
I think the reason why Mieczyslaw Krzynski
didn't finish his piece was because he couldn't perform it.
It is a piece that is
deeply sorrowful,
and I can't imagine any context
in which that would have been allowed.
That piece was written for himself, I think,
and finally, we are giving voice to him.
And I can only hope that...
he's pleased with what I've done.
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BEGINS SOFTLY)
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONCLUDES)
PERL: Afterwards...
I think we were scared.
Scared to face reality.
I think, my whole life,
all I wanted to do
is go through life without getting any punishment.
I'd try not to look at people, I'd try not to ask questions.
All of us had problems...
and life had a different meaning.
Entirely different meaning.
When I go round and talk about my experiences,
it's painful,
but I feel as though...
that humanity has got to learn,
and if humanity doesn't learn,
it will happen again and again and again.
It might come in a different overcoat,
but one has to be very careful.
(BIRDSONG)
HORNICK: So, I find great...
comfort when I come out here.
Whatever I have on my mind,
I come out into the garden.
It's just lovely.
It is very, very important that, uh, people should hear
and, um, that is the reason at 95
I am still willing
to go and talk to young people,
because they all tell me it's different
to hear our, uh, testimonies of survivors.
I just feel very lucky to have come out alive, out of there,
and reasonably sane, I think.
(LAUGHS)
(CLOCK TICKING)
They took me
and a few others who so managed to survive...
to Sweden...
for our recovery.
And that was...
magic.
And every night we listened to music,
and I interpreted that music...
for my life.
How the tragedy
destroyed everyone
in my family;
more than 50 members I lost.
And every night...
that was our spiritual recovery.
That there is...
perhaps beauty in the world.
Perhaps.
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