Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz

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son to fear selection, which primarily involved Jewish women.This is how she

described her feelings: ‘‘My heart said honestly and deliberately that it would

be better if they took me rather than anyone else, but at the same time I found

myself wishing that I might be lucky once more and not be gassed yet. ‘Just

don’t let them catch you!’ cried a passionate voice inside me. How did it hap-

pen that I had two wishes at the same time? Yet in those days my condition

was such that I would have greeted death as a welcome friend.’’ A short time

before this she had given birth to a child that had been taken away from her

and murdered.

The following sentences from a document that Zelman Lewental buried

neara crematorium could be deciphered:‘‘. . . What does not distinguish them

is the fact that every person is governed in his subconscious by a psychic will

to live and an endeavor to live and survive. A person makes himself believe

that he is not concerned with his own self but only with the general welfare.

Hewould like to survive forone reason or another, out of one consideration or

another, and for this purpose he invents hundreds of excuses. And the truth

is that one wants to stay alive at any price.’’

One fact has been conﬁrmed by all prisoners who experienced bombard-

ments by Allied planes. The inmates did not fear them even though they

were not allowed to go into shelters. Elie Wiesel is among those who de-

scribed how the inmates rejoiced when the BunaWorks were bombed, though

their barracks shook and a direct hit would have caused hundreds of casu-

alties. ‘‘Every bomb that exploded ﬁlled us with joy and made us trust life

again,’’ he writes. Erich Kohlhagen remembers that the bombing of the Buna

Works on August 20, 1944, killed thirty-eight inmates and wounded numer-

ous others. Krystyna Zywulska describes the ﬁrst air-raid alarm that sounded

in the women’s camp as ‘‘the most beautiful music.’’ When the immediate

vicinity of the camp was bombed for the ﬁrst time and the barracks shook,

the prisoners prayed for the longest possible duration of the bombardment.

124 n the prisoners

music and games

nnn

Death was as much of an everyday phenomenonas chronic hunger, andbloody

tracks on the camp road did not attract much attention; but in the same camp

concerts were given. When Auschwitz was built, it was already a tradition of

the Nazi concentration camps to form an orchestra of inmates. It had to play

marches when the labor columns marched out and in—not only because the

ss cared about adding a pseudomilitary touch to camp life, but also because

this kind of music helped the prisoners to march through the gate briskly and

in precisely aligned rows of ﬁve, which enabled the ss to make an easy count.

As early as January 6, 1941, inmates started rehearsing in Block 24 with in-

struments that they had been permitted to receive from their homes. Because

the camp at that timehoused Poles, among whom therewere enough qualiﬁed

musicians, the orchestra was composed of Poles.

In keeping with the camp administration’s need for prestige, the orchestra

not only played in the camp after the morning roll call and before the evening

roll call but also gave concerts,which usually tookplace on Sundays in front of

the commandant’s villa.To enable the musicians to practice, they were given a

rehearsal room in Block 24. Soon these rehearsals led to concerts for the pris-

oners as well. Tadeusz Borowski has described such a rehearsal: ‘‘The concert

hall is directly under the brothel in Block 24. It was rather crowded and noisy.

The audience stood along the walls; the musicians were scattered throughout

the room, sat wherever they could ﬁnd a space, and tuned their instruments.

Opposite thewindow there was a small raised podium. Doubling as a conduc-

tor, the kitchen capo climbed up on it, and the potato peelers and that guy

from the truck (oh, I forgot: the musicians usually peel potatoes and drive

trucks) started playing.’’

Jerzy Brandhuber has described the eﬀect of a concert:

Sunday evening; in the background the kitchen, a building with a mansard

roof and a ﬂower garden next to it. At the stand the musicians, inmates in

white suits with red braids. A big symphony orchestra, as hard-working as

may be found anywhere, with breaks only for page-turning. And all around

a crowd as in a spa, only it is white and blue, a crowd standing right across

the road.

And then there were informal concerts. On rainy Sundays the orchestra

did not play outside. Quiet in the concert hall; only a few persons sit or

stand around forlornly.

At the piano a Hungarian virtuoso. As a Jew he is not permitted to play in

the orchestra, and so he plays when the music room is vacant. He actually

plays for himself. He wears a shabby suit, the white and blue kind, and he

plays and plays. When I look out the window, I forget; I don’t see the red

walls or the comrades walking outside. He plays Mozart, Beethoven, Schu-

bert, Bach.And then he suddenly intonesChopin’s Funeral March.Whenhe

stops, he sits motionless with his hands on the keys. All of us understand

one another.

I have frequently heard others express the words with which Brandhuber

concludes his report: ‘‘That was the only moment at which I forgot the camp

around me.’’ Thomas Geve writes that there can be no other place where one

could feel the eﬀect of music more deeply. He was thirteen when he listened

to concerts in Auschwitz. On more than one occasion I stood in that rehearsal

hall and felt more clearly than ever before or afterward the power of music,

whichproclaimedthat therewas a human world beyond Auschwitz,which was

able to put individual features on the faces of the listeners, which managed to

dissolve the inert, gray mass that constantly surrounded us, which helped to

keep inmates from drowning in the everyday life of the extermination camp.

The Polish percussionist Czeslaw Sowul remains unforgotten. Every move-

ment of his always lively face spread good humor.The jokes that he always had

at the ready gained him a certain fool’s privilege from the ss, and he skillfully

exploited it.

n The fame of the Auschwitz orchestra goaded the leaders of the other camps

into action. Soon orchestras were playing in the men’s and women’s camps

of Birkenau, in Monowitz, in Golleschau (which had more than twenty in-

struments and put on concerts for the ss garrison), and in Blechhammer. An

orchestra formed in the Gypsy camp achieved renown.

The most graphic description was given by Simon Laks and René Coudy,

members of the Birkenau camp orchestra that was founded in the summer of

1942. Because that camp did not have so many Polish musicians, the ban on

Jewish members, mentioned above, was not enforced, though the capo had to

be an ‘‘Aryan.’’ ‘‘He was given his position on the basis of his presumed Ger-

man nationality,’’ write Laks and Coudy. ‘‘Of course he constantly browbeat us

Jewish musicians, gave us the most improbable orders, and made our hard life

even harder. The nucleus of our orchestra consisted of about ﬁfteen inmates

that had been sent from Auschwitz I, where there had been a big orchestra

for a long time. These had numbers between 2,000 and 16,000 and thus were

126 n the prisoners

absolute masters over us novices. Most of themmadeunrestrained use of their

power.’’ In the early period the members of the orchestra were subject to the

periodic camp selections. Laks and Coudy give a clear account of the changes

made in the course of time: ‘‘Our splendid music room has become a mecca

for the ss and the vips of the camp. Almost every evening jolly tunes may be

heard in our block. There is singing and dancing.The ss puts on ostentatious

birthday celebrations, and the men have the inmates serve them schnapps.’’

The authors do not say that the inmates also had to ‘‘organize’’ this booze, for

this is self-evident to any ‘‘Auschwitzer.’’

An orchestra was established in the Birkenau women’s camp as well. Since

the head of thecamp, Maria Mandel,was a music lover,this orchestra could be

conducted by Alma Rosé, a Jew. Her father had been the concertmaster of the

Vienna Philharmonic and founder of the world-famous Rosé Quartet. Alma,

who continued the family tradition, married a Dutchman and was deported

from Holland in 1943. In Auschwitz shewas housed in the experimental Block

10. When the birthday celebration of a vip was being planned, a request for a

violinist was made. Rosé came forward. Her virtuoso playing so impressed the

female wardens in attendance that they told the head of the camp about her.

She arranged for Rosé to be transferred to the women’s camp and appointed

her the conductor of the orchestra.

Even in Auschwitz Alma Rosé remained an artist with all her soul. She

turned those female instrumentalists into an orchestra that programmed

works by Verdi and Chopin, Strauß and Tchaikovsky. Uncompromising in or-

chestrating and rehearsing this music, she was always on the lookout for new

scores and instruments. According to Seweryna Szmaglewska, Rosé ‘‘con-

ducts calmly, as though shewere seeing nothing around her. She is controlled,

and her graceful movements seem to be devoted only to the music.’’ Alica

Jakubovic, a camp messenger who was able to listen to rehearsals, asserts that

shenever loved music as much as she did when Alma Rosé was playing.Manca

Svalbova has described her friend in these words: ‘‘She lived in another world.

Music to her meant her love and her disappointments, her sorrow and her

joys, her eternal longing and her faith, and this music ﬂoated high above the

camp atmosphere.’’ ‘‘She was not only a famous artist but also a wonderful

comrade,’’ write Laks and Coudy.

We owe the following description of thewomen’s orchestra to Lucie Adels-

berger:

Music was something like a lapdog of the camp administration, and the

participants were clearly in its good graces. Their block was even better

tended than the clerk’s oﬃce or the kitchen. Food was plentiful, and the

girls from the orchestra were neatly attired in blue cloth dresses and caps.

Music and Games n 127

The musicians were quite busy; they played at the roll call, and the women

whowere returningfromwork exhausted had tomarch totherhythmof the

music. Music was ordered for all oﬃcial occasions: the speeches of the ss

camp leaders, transports, and hangings. In between, the musicians served

to entertain the ss and the inmates in the inﬁrmary. In the women’s camp

the orchestra played in the inﬁrmary every Tuesday and Friday afternoon

undisturbed by all the goings-on and selections around it.

Even though Alma Rosé was in a far less favorable position than her col-

league in the main camp, the Polish kitchen capo Nierychlo, she did not curry

favor with the camp administration as obsequiously as her male counterpart.

On the contrary: sometimes she stopped the music because female ss guards

were loudlyconversing and laughing.When friends warned her that she might

be punished for this, her response was brief: ‘‘I can’t make music that way.’’

The guards quietly took note of this rebuke by inmate Rosé.

Manca Svalbova has likened Rosé to a bird that cannot get used to being

conﬁned in a cage and repeatedly bloodies its wings.The camp also took into

its grasp this sensitive artist, who lived in a world of music as if on an island

in the sea of the Birkenau barracks. Alma Rosé died on April 4, 1944. The

day before she had still been healthy. Legends have formed around her death.

Some people believe that she poisoned herself. Rosé had frequently visited the

Theresienstadt familycamp; when its inmates were gassed a few weeks before

her death, she was a broken woman. Others claim that she was poisoned by

jealous inmate functionaries.

n Music exerted its eﬀects even in camps in which no orchestra played. Lex

van Weren, who had been transferred together with other Dutch Jews to the

Jawischowitz coal mine, where there were particularly harsh working condi-

tions, was pulled out of the labor detail by the camp elder when he discov-

ered that van Weren, a professional jazz trumpeter, could play the French

horn that the elder had ‘‘organized’’ for himself. At Christmastime Lex had

to play ‘‘Silent Night, Holy Night’’ for the ss roll call leader all evening long.

As a reward he was assigned to barracks duty and did not need to go down

into the mine. After some time only ﬁfteen of the 300 Jews who had come to

Jawischowitz with van Weren were still alive—among them Lex van Weren,

whose artistry and French horn had saved his life.

Seweryna Szmaglewska tells about a ﬁfteen-year-old Greek girl named

Alegri who had a wonderful voice and whom her superiors frequentlyasked to

sing while she worked. ‘‘Alegri starts singing, and the ﬁrst word of her song,

which now resounds over the ponds and meadows of Upper Silesia, is ‘Mama.’

It sounds exactly the way it sounds on all Polish lips and has the accent to

128 n the prisoners

which Polish ears are accustomed. And this word, in which lie longing and

love and an outcry, keeps recurring in the refrain.’’

Szmaglewska has committed to memory another Greek tune as well:

‘‘Alegri sings another song. It begins with the words ‘O thalme chasis,’ which

are said to mean ‘Oh, come back!’ A song of longing. The word ‘nostalgia’

recurs several times. The song is exceptionally melodious, and its semitones

of mourning and longing speak to all of us.’’ Alegri perished in Auschwitz;

music was not able to save her life.

Zoﬁa Posmysz has described a woman in the satellite camp Budy who be-

cause of her beautiful voice was called the ‘‘Singer.’’ She had to sing for the

ss guards their favorite songs. ‘‘One day a Latvian sentry gave her the rest of

his noonday soup and advised her to wash her face with urine to keep her

fair complexion and protect her face from the strong sun. Another time an ss

corporal asked her how old she was and for what reason she had been sent

to Auschwitz.’’ Posmysz points out how unusual such a personal interest in

an inmate was. Although the ‘‘Singer’’ was in the penal company, she was ex-

empted from the hardest labor. In return the Polish woman had to learn the

German text of the songs and sing them during work breaks.

Emilio Jani, an Italian singer, was also given privileged treatment because

of his voice, and thus he titled his memoir ‘‘I Was Saved by My Voice.’’

The concerts of classical music in Block 24 made a profound impression

on me, but when I think of music in Auschwitz, banal songs also come to

mind. The unusual situation in which I heard them probably contributed to

the deep impression they made. I had to await my fate in a bunker cell. For a

while anothercell housed a German who would sing when the sound of doors

and keys indicated that no ss man was in the cellar. He evidently sang while

standing close to the door of his cell, for his voice was quite audible. Soulfully

and sobbingly he kept singing ‘‘Have you up there forgotten about me?’’ Since

then this melody [from a Lehár operetta] has never failed to evoke for me the

atmosphere of the bunker in Auschwitz. When I was sent to the bunker, a

simple hit song grabbed me the way a piece of serious music rarely has. This

is what I wrote about it:

Now they’ve got me, and I am utterly defenseless. The sounds from a radio

come blaring in through the window. The guard room must be above me.

Shall I get out of here alive? What shall I have to go through until that

day comes?

I walk up and down. After all, I have always prepared myself for this

eventuality, and I have always known that I was taking risks. When four

million have died in Auschwitz, I shall know how to die as well.The shadow

of the barred window slowly creeps along the wall.

Music and Games n 129

I sit down. Oh, it’ll be hard. The radio plays a new song; the ﬁrst mea-

sures are soft and enticing, and then a femalevoice can be heard. It sounds

quite close: ‘‘Franzl, all of Vienna sends you greetings...’’AllofVienna

sends you greetings! I am hot and lie down on the blankets.

It’s probably an ordinary tearjerker, but I feel as though I said farewell

while listening to this song.

n In Auschwitz there was not only music-making but sports as well. As early

as spring 1941 soccer games were played in the main camp. Tadeusz Borow-

ski has described a soccer ﬁeld in a section of Birkenau that was adjacent to

the crematoriums. Jehuda Bacon, a child at the time, played there, and on

one occasion so did the dreaded block leader Stefan Baretzki. Siegfried Hal-

breich tells about soccer matches in the Monowitz indoctrination camp. It

goes without saying that only better-nourished inmates were able to partici-

pate in sports. Marc Klein remembers soccer battles between well-nourished

vips that were often watched by ss men.

Games were even played in the courtyard of the crematorium. Miklos

Nyiszli describes a game of ss against sk—that is, guards versus inmates

on the Sonderkommando. Nyiszli reports that the spectators got excited,

laughed, and screamed as at any playing ﬁeld in the world.

The ss most consistently supported boxing. Teddy Pietrzykowski, a Polish

amateur, was probably the best-known boxer in the main camp. On a work-

free Sunday in the spring of 1941, German capos boxed and ss men watched.

After the capo Walter, a professional boxer, had beaten his partners, new ones

were sought, and this was the incentive: ‘‘Anyone who boxes with Walter will

get bread.’’ Teddy came forward and forced Walter to give up.Walter gave him

not only bread but also margarine and sausage, and he saw to it that Teddy

was assigned to a ‘‘nourishing’’ detail: the cow shed.The ss men became ﬁred

up and ‘‘organized’’ real boxing gloves; the head of the kitchen detail, an en-

thusiastic spectator, rewarded Teddy after each ﬁght with a kettle of soup.

Teddy estimates that he boxed against thirty or forty persons in Auschwitz. ss

men watched regularly and made bets. When Teddy was put on a transport to

Neuengamme in the spring of 1943, the head of the kitchen detail gave him

boxing gloves, and Teddy actually did some boxing in Neuengamme as well.

Tadeusz Borowski has provided a description of what may have been a bout

between the capo Walter and Teddy. He recalls a conversation among specta-

tors while a German capo named Walter was ﬁghtinga Pole in the old laundry:

‘‘Look.Atworkhe(Walter)ﬂoorsaMuselmann with one blow if he wants to,

and here—three rounds and nothing. And he even got punched in the mouth.

Too many spectators, it seems, huh?’’

130 n the prisoners

Boxing bouts were put on in the satellite camp Janina as well, and Max Kas-

ner remembers that thesewere the hobbyof Kleemann, the ss camp leader. In

the summer of 1944 the gentlemen from the mine administration watched a

bout. ss roll call leaderWilhelm Claussen, who was responsible for the sports

activities of the garrison, boasted when he was an American prisoner of war

that he had promoted boxing among the inmates; he tried to present him-

self in a good light by saying, ‘‘Didn’t I sit among them at almost every bout,

and didn’t they breathe a sigh of relief when I entered the ring myself ?’’ To

the inmates who participated, such bouts brought very concrete advantages—

namely, additional food rations.

n Ata laterdate the camp administration also organized theshowing of ﬁlms.

I saw Zarah Leander for the ﬁrst time in Auschwitz, though I remember the

overcrowded room and the stiﬂing bad air more distinctly than the actress or

the movie. Thomas Geve, who was almost a child at the time, has described

the eﬀect of a ﬁlm on him. The very diﬀerent world of elegance and the family

lifedepicted in it made the greatest impression on him. As a Jew hewould have

been barred from such showings, but through the good oﬃces of a German

criminal he was able to watch. Geve remembers that only Germans and Poles

received tickets at the time. Marc Klein concludes his description of a screen-

ing with these words: ‘‘How little a person needs to free himself from the

anxieties of theworld that surrounds him, no matter how cruel these may be!’’

Only Louise Alcan has supplied a diﬀerent reaction to showings of ﬁlms.

She writes that half of the female inmates of Rajsko declined to attend such a

showing. Hössler, the head of thecamp,whowas in attendance, is said to have

asked the women afterward whether they were satisﬁed now. Alcan believes

that Hössler was trying to mock the inmates or divert them from dangerous

thoughts, but I don’t agree. Sometimes devilish intentions are read into every

measure of the ss. On the basis of my experience I feel that the shrewdness of

the ss should not be overestimated and that the indiﬀerence and thoughtless-

ness born of total desensitization as well as the eﬀects of bureaucratic sche-

matism should not be underestimated. I believe that screenings, sport events,

and concerts were organized because every camp administration responded

to a need for prestige and none wanted to be outdone by another. Films and

projectors were available to the garrison, and so it took no additional eﬀort

to use them in the camp as well.

I have precise knowledge of one incident. One day posters were aﬃxed in

the inmates’ quarters on which a big louse was depicted with these words in

German and Polish:‘‘A louse—yourdeath.’’ Thisposter is frequentlydescribed

as the height of mockery, for the death that the poster warned against was

repeatedly dealt the inmates by the ss. I know the background. The superior

Music and Games n 131

of the ss garrison physician was pressing for a vigorous ﬁght against the ty-

phus epidemic in Auschwitz that had spread to the garrison and the civilian

population. Since this illness is carried by lice, the infestation of lice had to

be eliminated. The ss garrison physician wanted to gain the cooperation of

the prisoners and asked me one day whether we should not prepare a poster

calling for war on lice. I reacted positively because I wanted this project to add

another inmate to our good commando. In this way we actually managed to

get the Polish artist Zbigniew Raynoch, generally called Zbyszek, as a drafts-

man. Designing the poster was his ﬁrst task, and later he was given other

graphic assignments. Zbyszek stayed with us, which means that the poster

helped a prisoner.

n Soccer, boxing bouts, Zarah Leander behind electriﬁed barbed wire, Bee-

thoven concerts by inmates for inmates in the extermination camp—it may be

that some who learn about this cannot comprehend that the victims were pre-

pared to listen to music and watch movies in Auschwitz. Anyone who does not

approveof this would logically have to blamethe prisoners fornotcommitting

suicide, for the instinct of survival makes a person seek diversion wherever

this is possible.

To be sure, for the gray mass of pariahs there were neither movies nor

sports nor concerts.

132 n the prisoners

canada

nnn

‘‘Organizing,’’ the name given to the appropriation of institutional property

that had not yet been distributed, was part of the tradition of the Nazi concen-

tration camps. It oﬀered the guards a welcome opportunity to enrich them-

selves, and the prisoners had to ‘‘organize’’ if they did not want to perish.

Jean Améry has described the dilemma faced by everyone: ‘‘Inmates always

had to be clean-shaven, but it was strictly forbidden to own a shaving kit, and

visits to the barber were possible only everyother week. A missing button on a

garment with zebra stripes was punishable, but if one was lost at work, which

was unavoidable, it was virtually impossible to replace it.’’

Georges Wellers enumerates an inmate’s options if he lost his cap. He

either had to steal a comrade’s or have a friendwhose position gave him an op-

portunity to ‘‘organize’’ one. Without a cap an inmate was subject to beatings

and punishments that might spell his end.

Emil Bednarek has described the same problem from the perspective of a

block elder. ‘‘During the night the inmates stole one another’s shoes or cut the

buttons oﬀ the coats. In the barracks they bloodied one another, and in such

cases I gave beatings to both factions. When the inmates marched oﬀ and an

ss man standing next to the block leader’s room ascertained that someone’s

coat had no buttons, the block elder was called and given a beating.’’

Primo Levi, who gathered his experiences in Monowitz, as did Améry and

Wellers, has given this graphic description of the practice that developed from

this necessity to ‘‘organize’’:

In accordance with camp regulationsshoes have to be blacked and polished

every morning, and the ss holds every block elder responsible for the ob-

servance of this regulation by every inmate of his block. This would lead

one to assume that every block is periodically given a supply of shoe polish.

This is not the case, however; there is an entirely diﬀerent mechanism. I

must point out that in the evening every block receives a quantity of soup

that is signiﬁcantly larger than the sum of the regular rations. The surplus

is distributed at the discretion of the block elder, who ﬁrst takes care of

his friends and protégés and gives appropriate portions to the sweeper, the

night watchmen, the lice inspectors, and all other vip functionaries of the

block. The remainder (and every conscientious block elder sees to it that