Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps.(Book review)

Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps. By Shirli Gilbert. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. [xxii, 243 p. ISBN 0-927797-4. $45.] Index, bibliography, appendix, music examples, illustrations.

When one takes into consideration the weight of testimony and analysis of events pertaining to the Nazi attempt to obliterate European Jewry during the Holocaust it comes as a surprise to find that Shirli Gilbert's Music in the Holocaust is one of the few available works in English that attempts to discuss and analyze the role of music in Nazi ghettos and concentration camps. Much of the available literature deals with music and musical personages in two widely different concentration camps, Auschwitz, which primarily functioned as an extermination center with subcamps designed for forced labor, and Terezin (Theresienstadt), which functioned as a holding center but whose active cultural life was permitted by the Nazis for public relations purposes.

With the exception of these two areas, researchers working in the field of music and its use in ghettos and concentration camps need to access diverse sources in order to obtain information. I hoped that this volume would present a consolidation of information, and many of my hopes have been realized. However, the title is perhaps a bit misleading as the actual content of the book is more restricted than the title would lead one to believe. Gilbert divides the book into four main sections, each illuminating the multiple layers of function that music filled within the Warsaw and Vilna ghettos and Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz. Appendices list titles of newly created songs in the Warsaw and Vilna ghettos, the contents of German political prisoners' songbooks in Sachsenhausen, newly created Polish songs in Sachsenhausen, the repertoire of the Orchestra in Sachsenhausen, and newly created songs in Auschwitz. There is also an extensive bibliography.

As is clear from Gilbert's material, even though there were commonalities, each situation, be it ghetto or concentration camp, had its own unique issues, pertaining not only to artistic personages, but also to historical contexts and the actions of political leaders such as Jacob Gens in Vilna and Chaim Rumkowski in Lodz. For example much music from the Warsaw ghetto arose under horrific conditions, not the least of which was the confinement of over 400,000 people in a minute portion of the city. There was great social stratification resulting in profoundly startling levels of inequality as people from many strata of society were brought in and confined. In contrast to this situation the ghetto in Vilna was relatively underpopulated with only about 20,000 individuals confined. However, their confinement was preceded by the indiscriminate murder of two thirds of the Jews of that city and as a result the level of anxiety and insecurity there must have exceeded that initially found in Warsaw.

Gilbert provides substantial information which illustrates how the individual social stratification found within the ghettos resulted in different types of music making, ranging from orchestral, chamber, theater, cafe music, and house concerts to street songs (some of which were sung for the purpose of begging for food, while others expressed anger at the social discrepancy within the ghetto and still others voiced criticism of the Judenrat, the Jewish Council). A final type of song, those of resistance, came from members of partisan organizations. In some ghettos these were in direct conflict with the policy of the self-governing Jewish councils who thought that passive acquiescence and participation in labor useful to the Germans was the best option for survival.

Information is quite detailed at times. For example the orchestra in the Warsaw ghetto performed approximately forty times between November 1940 and April 1942 with a repertoire that included works by Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Grieg, Borodin and Saint-Saens (even though regulations proscribed the performances of such 'Aryan' composers, p. 43). ...