Both Soyfer and Zipper believed that exercising the intellect helped preserve a prisoner’s self-respect in the face of constant humiliation. Initially performed in secret, Dachau Song was eventually learned by many camp inmates. Soyfer and Zipper wrote Dachau Song in September 1938 as an ironic response to the motto “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Makes Freedom) inscribed on the gate at the entrance to the camp. They met again at Dachau, where both toiled as “horses,” hauling cartloads of heavy stone throughout the camp. Playwright Jura Soyfer and composer Herbert Zipper, active in Viennese antifascist cabaret, were arrested by the Gestapo after the German-Austrian Anschluss of 1938.
Like “audio snapshots,” these works offer a telling glimpse into the events and emotions that their creators and original audiences experienced firsthand. Such music-particularly the topical songs-also serves as a form of historical documentation. These included topical songs inspired by the latest gossip and news, and songs of personal expression that often concerned the loss of family and home.Ĭlassical music-instrumental works, art songs, opera-was also produced and performed during this period, notably by prisoners at the Theresienstadt (Terezín) ghetto and transit camp in Czechoslovakia, as well as in several other ghettos and camps.įor many victims of Nazi brutality, music was an important means of preserving and asserting their humanity. While popular songs dating from before the war remained attractive as escapist fare, the ghetto, camp, and partisan settings also gave rise to a repertoire of new works. Music was heard in many ghettos, concentration camps, and partisan outposts of Nazi-controlled Europe.
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