Music from Auschwitz: A Concert Series

Join the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance for Music From Auschwitz, a series of two evening concerts starting at 7 PM Eastern Time. The concerts will feature ten short musical pieces arranged by Polish political prisoners who were members of the men’s orchestra in the Auschwitz I camp. Using popular German hits of the 1930s and 40s, they arranged and orchestrated these tangos, waltzes, and foxtrots for a dance band that played Sunday concerts for the Auschwitz garrison near the camp commandant’s villa. The musical pieces were recently rediscovered in the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland.

Led by conductor Oriol Sans, a University of Michigan student orchestra will perform the original musical pieces interspersed with lines, spoken by the singers, from testimonies and interviews with members of the Auschwitz I men’s orchestra after the war. Silent for more than seventy years, the voices and stirring melodies of those imprisoned at Auschwitz will be brought to life in the Museum’s Edmond J. Safra Hall.