As we can read here, both music was both a forced activity and free expression within the lives of prisoners at the forced-labor camp we will be visiting today. Consider these two perspectives from the above site.
"The SS made singing, like everything else they did, a mockery, a torment for the prisoners ... those who sang too softly or too loudly were beaten. The SS men always found a reason ... when in the evening we had to drag our dead and murdered comrades back into the camp, we had to sing. Hour after hour we had to, whether in the burning sun, freezing cold, or in snow or rain storms, on the roll call plaza we had to stand and sing of ... the girl with the dark brown eyes, the forest or the wood grouse. Meanwhile the dead and dying comrades lay next to us on a ripped up wool blanket or on the frozen or soggy ground."
"None of us had studied music. We were bound by the same fate and the common love of music and singing … daily we counted hundreds of dead. We froze and starved - yet evenings we sang and made music … we did not want to be martyrs. We wanted to survive, and bring fascist Germany to its knees, to somehow play a part in this."
"The SS made singing, like everything else they did, a mockery, a torment for the prisoners ... those who sang too softly or too loudly were beaten. The SS men always found a reason ... when in the evening we had to drag our dead and murdered comrades back into the camp, we had to sing. Hour after hour we had to, whether in the burning sun, freezing cold, or in snow or rain storms, on the roll call plaza we had to stand and sing of ... the girl with the dark brown eyes, the forest or the wood grouse. Meanwhile the dead and dying comrades lay next to us on a ripped up wool blanket or on the frozen or soggy ground."
"None of us had studied music. We were bound by the same fate and the common love of music and singing … daily we counted hundreds of dead. We froze and starved - yet evenings we sang and made music … we did not want to be martyrs. We wanted to survive, and bring fascist Germany to its knees, to somehow play a part in this."
No comments:
Post a Comment