The role of music at the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, the 80th anniversary of whose liberation is being remembered on Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday, is the focus of two films set to air on British TV, namely public broadcaster BBC and Comcast’s Sky.
Both films explore the roles that music and the as many as 15 orchestras formed there played at Auschwitz where more than 1.1 million people lost their lives, including how musicians had to perform march music as other prisoners in the camp had to leave for work early in the morning and return late or play for the entertainment of Nazi officers.
The BBC’s The Last Musician of Auschwitz, directed by Toby Trackman, tells the story of cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, “who at 99 is the only surviving member of the Women’s Orchestra at Auschwitz.” The 90-minute film also includes testimony from other former Auschwitz inmates who played and composed music at the camp, exploring “what music meant in the worst place on Earth.” Woven throughout are new performances of musical works written by camp prisoners and “filmed in the shadow of Auschwitz today,” the BBC highlights.
Lasker-Wallfisch, among other things, recalls in the film how she ended up joining the orchestra and being scared to play a wrong note while also benefiting from getting slightly more food than other prisoners.
The film, from Two Rivers Media, also features, among others, a performance of “Träumerei (Dreams)” from Robert Schumann’s Scenes From Childhood, “which the notorious camp doctor Josef Mengele asked Anita to play for him — performed here by her son and professional cellist, Raphael Wallfisch,” the BBC synopsis highlights.
Meanwhile, Polish political prisoner Adam Kopyciński, a conductor of the first orchestra at Auschwitz, composed “Lullaby,” a handwritten manuscript which has survived and a performance of which the documentary also features, along with the likes of the song “There Is A Big House in Auschwitz,” performed by musicologist Petra Gelbart, who is of Romani descent. The song is believed to have first been sung at the camp and passed down through her family.
“I wasn’t aware that there was music in Auschwitz or, indeed, any of the camps,” director Trackman tells THR. “And when you first hear about that there’s definitely a bit of cognitive dissonance in that.”
As a director, joining the project was “a big personal decision to dive in, open that box, get in it, and really kind of see what was in there,” he adds. “I was also very, very aware of there being a huge body of work, of films around the Holocaust, and I was absolutely determined from the beginning that if I was going to tackle this, that I would approach it in a different way and make something that presented the experience in a different way.”
Finding the right tone meant “walking this tightrope between trying to be expressive and evocative and creative, but also being very, very sensitive to the subject matter and to the survivors and to all the victims, and never allowing creative desire to overshadow any of those things,” Trackman explains. “It was about being respectful and honoring and not getting in the way of the tragedy.”
After all, he found that music at Auschwitz was something “that meant so much to people that had been so twisted and corrupted” by the Nazis.
He and the rest of the team chose the music presented with a focus on “making sure that each piece of music could help us tell part of the wider story. So we were looking for music that spoke to emotional themes that we could really explore,” the director explained, adding that the team was so lucky to get to cooperate with Auschwitz and its museum. “We were incredibly privileged to be allowed to stage the pieces of music around the camp,” he emphasized.
Not only the music pieces performed in the doc but also the camera lenses used to shoot it had a horrible Auschwitz connection. “We had access to a set of lenses that we knew were German pre-war lenses, and they were in the process of being rehoused … but in the process of this rehousing, it emerged they were doing some research into the the origins of these lenses, and it was discovered that they were engineered by a German Jewish woman who had been imprisoned under house arrest in Berlin under the Nazi regime,” Trackman tells THR. “And then, tragically, she was sent to Auschwitz in 1943 and murdered. … And there’s actually a letter from the company to the Nazi finance office demanding their lenses back after she was sent to Auschwitz.”
The lenses are “very unusual in their optical qualities, quite soft and … romantic,” the director explains. “They’re not necessarily the choice that you would initially think of for a film about Auschwitz. But going into those spaces with performers who were related to survivors and recording music written by prisoners on a lens that was made by someone who died just behind the fence was incredibly powerful. I didn’t want there to be any artifice.”
Meanwhile, The Lost Music of Auschwitz, which became available on Sky Arts and Sky streaming service Now on Monday evening, features the eight-year-long mission of British composer and musician Leo Geyer to find, analyze and in some cases arrange and bring to life fragments of music manuscripts composed by some Auschwitz prisoners.
Noting that “many of the manuscripts they left behind are almost too faint to read, while others are damaged beyond recognition,” the 90-minute film from production firm Windfall Films follows Geyer “on this musical journey as he discovers how the musicians rebelled with secret performances, weaving forbidden melodies into concerts … interwoven with powerful interviews with some of the last remaining survivors and special performances from (Geyer’s) orchestra.”
The film is executive produced by Dan Kendall, directed by Tom Cook and edited by Emily West, with music services provided by Constella Music.
Says Geyer, in a statement about the film: “After many years of research, I’m pleased to be able to share this music with the public to commemorate 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. The Holocaust should never be forgotten. Through this music, I hope to bring everyone together to remember not only those whose lives were saved due to their musical talents but also all those who suffered and perished during the Holocaust.”
Before a screening of the film in London late on Jan. 20, producer Kendall shared that he was drawn to the project right away when he was introduced to Geyer and Constella managing director Nathalie De Potter. “After about two minutes of speaking with them, it wasn’t a question of if I wanted to work with them on a film about this extraordinary subject,” he explained. But “my mind was really racing on how on Earth we could possibly make it happen,” he added, citing both creative and practical questions.
“The market for single films is difficult,” and putting together an orchestra would also be expensive, Kendall emphasized. And “it didn’t really fit into any neat genre,” which could have added a commissioning challenge to the financial issues. But he said that the Sky Arts team embraced the project. “We believe in the power and importance of the story,” he said, summarizing the attitude at Sky.
During a Q&A following the London screening, Geyer and Cook were asked how they would explain the role music played in the death camp and why and how exactly the Nazis used music there. “They used music to let off steam. They used music to reward the guards. I think that was certainly one of the things they did, but it was definitely a tool,” Cook explained. “They used music as a tool in order to help run the camp — and the marching music was, you know, that was the main thing. The orchestra was there to make sure they could go out of the camp every morning, come back every night and march in very, very straight lines, which made it easier to be counted. So they definitely enjoyed the music — the Germans — but they’re using it as a tool.”
Added Geyer: “So many decisions in Auschwitz were made to make everything very efficient, and playing marching music was part of that efficiency. That steady beat meant that the prisoners would move faster, they would move in column, and that meant everything about the operations was easier.”
He also emphasized how different that is from how people usually feel about music. “We think of music as something we enjoy, as pleasure. But … the purpose there was weaponizing it, using it as part of that killing machine,” Geyer said. “And it’s incredibly difficult to acknowledge that.”
For the prisoners, meanwhile, music was also an opportunity for “rebellion,” Geyer emphasized. “One of the things that the prisoners did, and it’s astonishing, was that they weaved in Polish melodies … into marching music. And the soldiers, they didn’t pick up on this, but for Polish prisoners, they heard these melodies, and it gave them strength and courage when they had none. It’s just an incredible gesture.”
The expert even mentioned that the musicians at the camp would sometimes play marching music by U.S. composer John Philip Sousa as a symbol of their defiance. “The soldiers didn’t pick up on any difference between that and normal German music. And, probably, I don’t think many prisoners would have necessarily been able to discern the difference,” Geyer explained. “But they knew that they were making this huge, big gesture back at the Nazis.”
He described much of his work as restoring, based on much research, musical pieces composed or played at the camp. But he also created one himself for the film. One of the many emotional moments in the doc sees a musician performing this solo violin piece, which Geyer composed to honor Romani violinist Jakub Segar, on a violin that also survived Auschwitz.
“Having done this research for such a long time you might think that I have got accustomed to the horrors, but it actually gets worse over time, because I learn more with each year,” Geyer shared. “I have no real way of explaining what that feels like to carry that weight, but I can say something in music, and that solo violin piece gave me the chance to say that.”
The team behind the doc emphasized how much thinking and detailed work they put into the film to get things right. For example, Cook highlighted that “we wanted to try and keep the documentary as authentic as possible and to avoid anything that smacked of artifice … So in our quest for authenticity, we also spent quite a long time at Auschwitz recording the sound of the place as it is now. So all of the sound that you hear over the shots of the modern-day camp are genuine sounds of Auschwitz now.”
In the selection of musicians featured, the team also ensured they would have Jewish and Romani representation to honor the many victims of the camp.
“I’m not Jewish, I’m not Polish, I’m not Romani, I am not descended from any person who perished in Auschwitz,” said Geyer. “But I am human, and the Holocaust was the greatest tragedy that humanity unleashed upon itself. And if there’s anything that I can do to prevent evil like that returning, then I’ll do it. And that was our ambition.”
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