Holocaust: A Music Memorial Film from Auschwitz

MUSIC: "Introitus from the Requiem" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

# Requiem aeternam

# Requiem aeternam

# Requiem aeternam

# Dona eis, Domine

# Et lux perpetua

# Et lux perpetua

# Luceat

# Luceat eis. #

# Te decet hymnus, Deus

# In Sion

# Et tibi reddetur votum

# In Jerusalem

# Exhaudi

Exhaudi

# Exhaudi

Exhaudi

Exhaudi

# Orationem meam

# Ad te

Ad te

# Ad te

Ad te

# Omnis caro veniet. #

# Requiem

# Aeternam

# Dona eis

# Domine

# Requiem aeternam

-# Requiem

-Aeternam Dona eis, Domine

# Dona eis, Domine

# Et lux perpetua

Et lux perpetua

# Et lux perpetua

Et lux perpetua

# Luceat eis

# Et lux perpetua

# Luceat eis. #

I couldn't speak for 30 years about these things.

I wanted to repress... what I had to endure.

It was so awful, I just couldn't talk about it.

If I remember...

I remember always only music.

Everything that was bad and...

I thought we couldn't survive,

but with music it was easier.

They took me to the orchestra.

All the others went to the crematorium, to be burnt there.

They killed my family.

They killed all my relatives - aunts and cousins and everything.

Everybody.

Little by little we'd know that everybody was killed,

was asphyxiated, gassed, and everything.

How can you conceive that in this century?

Is it possible to conceive this thing?

MUSIC: "Waltz no 2 in C sharp minor" by Frederick Chopin

I think music is something that you can have in your head,

which is completely divorced from what is actually happening outside.

You could retreat on an island...

..just to get away from what is happening.

It can act as an escape mechanism.

It is a sort of spiritual escape, for a few minutes,

out of the camp.

MUSIC: "Mazurka in C sharp minor" by Frederick Chopin

MUSIC: "Waltz in A minor" by Frederick Chopin

I was with my mother.

We were in one wagon, at least 100 people.

We just could sit. No water, nothing to eat.

And it lasted maybe three days, till we arrived.

It was written "Arbeit macht frei" -

Working makes you free.

And in front of us stand Mengele.

And he made to the right and to the left...

To the right went the younger people, to the left old people and children.

And my mother he said to the left,

and she opened her...mouth and said in German,

"I'm still young, I can work. And this is my daughter."

And Mengele said, "OK, go."

It's unbelievable what few words saved her life.

Noise. A great deal of noise and dogs barking.

That is the sort of thing I remember.

And people walking about in black capes. Those were the guards.

Rumours went about about gas chambers,

but we tried to not believe it, because it seemed too outrageous.

They were choosing us. They were dividing us.

My mother was in another group.

And...they took my father...

in a truck.

We never had time to say goodbye.

We didn't even know where he was going.

The gas crematoriums were just near the camp.

Was just near. Just...opposite this house.

The other guys were a long time dead.

They told us, "You see these flames? These are your parents."

There were flames, you know. And it was our parents, that.

Everybody. All the transports - they were burning them.

1940

1940

1940

1940

1940

1940

1940

On my birthday

On my birthday

The Germans walked in

Walked into Holland

Germans invaded Hungary

I was in second grade

I had a teacher

I had a teacher

A very tall man

His hair was completely plastered smooth

A very tall man

His hair was completely plastered smooth

A very tall man

He said, "Black crows..."

"Black crows," he said "Black crows invaded our country"

He said, "Black crows..."

"..invaded our country many years ago"

And then pointed right at me Pointed right at me

No more school

No more school

No more school

No more school

You must go away

You must go away

You must go away

And she said, "Quick, go!"

And she said, "Quick!"

And she said, "Quick!" And she said, "Quick, go!"

"Quick, go!"

And he said, "Don't breathe!"

And he said, "Don't breathe!"

And he said, "Don't" He said, "Don't breathe!"

And he said, "Don't breathe!"

And he said, "Don't breathe!"

And he said, "Don't" He said, "Don't breathe!"

Into those cattle wagons

For four days and four nights

For four days and four nights

And then we went through these strange sounding names

Strange sounding

And then we went through these strange sounding names

Polish

Polish names

Lots of cattle wagons there

Lots of cattle wagons

Lots of cattle wagons there

They were loaded with people

They were loaded with people

They shaved us

They shaved us

They tattooed a number on our arm

They tattooed a number on our arm

Flames going up in the sky

Flames

Going up in the sky It was smoking

It was smoking Flames going up in the sky

Flames

Going up in the sky

It was smoking It was smoking

Going up in the sky It was smoking It was smoking

You have your head shaved and a number tattooed on your arm. This is all done by prisoners.

They wanted to know what's going on outside, what you did before.

I don't know what made me say, "I used to play the cello."

So this lady walked in and she said, "You play the cello? Fantastic.

"We have an orchestra here and we have no cello in it."

Orchestra in Auschwitz? It somehow didn't...

didn't fit with what I was expecting to happen in Auschwitz.

Well, they put me in a group.

I don't know how somebody saw me...

Everything is like a miracle, I don't know. A musician was there.

He remembered me from one day before that I was an accordion player.

And he went to the SS and he took me out of the group.

I learnt after, that the group was...

..to go for experiments.

It must have been three or four weeks afterwards that we arrived.

And I was so hungry. But so hungry.

I went to the first lady, called Blokova,

and I said, "If I sing something, would you give me a piece of bread?"

She said, "Yes. If you sing, you can have a piece of bread."

I said in Hungarian, "And now I will sing for you Madame Butterfly."

So everybody was listening and crying.

And all of a sudden I hear a voice,

"Who was singing?"

And this was Irma Grese,

a terrible woman.

And she said to me, "OK, I take you to the orchestra."

So I said, "I'm not going without my mother."

I don't know how I dared to respond like this.

And she said, "OK, you come now with me and your mother I will bring tomorrow."

And she brought her the next day.

And so, this was my lucky day.

You'd walk out of this quite insignificant gate.

That's where we sat.

The first piece I played with them was "Marche Militaire" by Schubert.

That was our raison d'etre - to play marches.

There was music at the gate for people to march out and for the people to march back in.

Sounds crazy, but there it is.

New trains came,

and usually from Hungary,

then I had to sing at the...

inside the camp, but very close to them.

And then usually I had to sing very lively, very...

..I don't remember what kind of songs, but very lively ones.

So they should think,

"Oh, it's not so bad. Look how people sing and...music."

But it was terrible.

You have seen... maybe walk in...500 people.

And nobody came back.

I only asked myself, how could I do it?

Singing and knowing they are going to die in half an hour.

That was it.

We were playing.

Suddenly we see trucks.

And the trucks were full of young girls

who were naked.

Two of my cousins were there.

Young girls.

And they were crying, shouting...

It was, when I remember this...

I can never forget this scene. Never. Never.

They knew they were going to the crematorium.

Always I hear them cry...

and yelling and shouting.

And we're playing music.

That moment you say, "What are we doing?

"Why are we playing music now?

"All these people are going to the crematorium and they know they are."

A lot of trucks.

A lot. One after the other.

Always I am thinking about this thing. I will never forget.

One night,

maybe it was two o'clock,

a German came and said, "Eva und Lili, aufstehen!" -

get up and come.

Lili was from the opera in Prague.

I really was scared.

We went, and there was a very big party.

Some were close to our camp.

And there was Eichmann - the famous Eichmann - and there was Mengele.

They were drunk.

We sang together # Niemand liebt dich so wie ich. #

We were scared. Really scared. We were happy when we came back.

One day Mengele came in and wanted to hear the Traumerei by Schumann.

And that was on my list of things to play.

So my claim to fame is I played the Traumerei to Dr Mengele.

And you know Mengele was the guy who did the experiments on twins.

He experimented on people.

He was a complete enigma.

Mengele obviously liked classical music. How did he know about the Traumerei?

What was he dreaming about?

The officers would come - some officers -

and they ordered to play music for them.

They were almost crying.

The Germans, you know. The SS.

It was ridiculous. They were crying there...

outside they could kill you.

They could come with a dog and they could kill you.

Can you imagine the irony of all this?

Many times I was asking myself,

"Are we for real, here?"

I know people often talk about it as a terrible thing, to play music -

how could you play?

You know, in situations like that, you don't ask what can you do.

You are in a camp and people give you an instrument to play.

And I think it is very... I don't know what the expression is,

sort of idealistic to think that anybody in their right minds

would have said, "No, I'm sorry. I won't play here."

Ultimately, everybody wants to survive.

I sang because I had to... I didn't sing because I wanted.

They forced me to sing, even if I wouldn't have wanted it.

We didn't have too much time to think about the moral aspect of playing music in a camp.

I don't think it was immoral.

The immorality was with the Germans, not with us.

They reduced us to nobodies.

Creatures.

We were living in an abyss of...

..unspeakable terror.

And we were trying to play music well.

It seems crazy now, but it somehow can lift you out of the...shit.

That's what it was.

Subtitles by Isabel Plaza BBC Broadcast - 2005

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