The Lost Music of Auschwitz (2025) Movie Script
1
"The following programme contains
scenes which some viewers may find
distressing."
(RAIN PATTERS)
POLLACK: Myself and all the others
realised...
this is a place
where...
hate... and terror
were beyond anything we had seen.
We were so fearful.
Constant fear.
We were terrified.
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BUILDS)
GEYER: Auschwitz was
the largest death camp
the world has ever seen.
Around 1.1 million people
perished here.
Of those, one million were Jewish,
70,000 were Polish,
and 21,000 were Romani
and Sinti people.
Auschwitz was also home
to at least six orchestras,
formed of prisoners
and commissioned by the Nazis.
This music was part
of the infrastructure of the camp.
Music was weaponised.
I'm a classical composer
and conductor.
For the last eight years,
I've been piecing together
the fragments
of the music manuscripts
that remain.
Hidden in the notes,
there are many examples
of where musicians rebelled...
with secret performances
and weaving forbidden melodies
into concerts.
All of these stories
are very special.
I've been trying to understand
what the music would have
sounded like in Auschwitz
so that we can finally
hear this music,
in some cases,
for the first time in 80 years.
EDITH: We were standing outside
in front of that gate,
and there was that famous music
which used to play in Auschwitz.
Practically everybody cried,
we never cried.
You suddenly remembered,
"Oh, there was a world
which we used to know."
MOZART:
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Mvt.1
(MUSIC FADES, ENDS)
I've been to Auschwitz ten times,
and on each trip,
here for several days.
Hiya, Leo.
Good to see you again.
Please come in.
Thank you.
'So, a very long time.'
Please sit down.
Thank you.
The collection department
in Auschwitz houses
all kinds of different artefacts
that relate to the camp's existence,
and this includes
artworks, musical instruments,
and also music manuscripts.
Thank you very much, Jan, thank you.
I first came to the collections
department eight years ago
and I had a conversation
with one of the archivists,
and he mentioned to me
in a somewhat offhand way
that there were
some music manuscripts
in the collections department.
I couldn't believe
that such a thing existed.
This is an example
of one of the parts in the archive,
and we can see it's very damaged
and the title is missing,
the instrument is missing,
but this is one of the pieces
of the jigsaw.
And I know because
of the range of the part
that this is a violin two part.
None of these manuscripts
are complete,
so the challenge
for me as a composer
is to try and,
authentically as possible,
complete the gaps.
It becomes even more complicated
to make the arrangements
because you didn't have
the same players day in
and day out because tragically
the musicians were dying.
And so I've had to research
testimonies, refer to photos,
to try and understand
exactly who was there at that time
to get to the sound
as purely as possible.
Following my conversations
with survivors,
one of the most
important things for them
is that we inherit the truth.
Music is an abstract artform,
and therefore music can
speak beyond words.
And with something so enormous
and of such gravity
as the Holocaust,
actually music is helpful, I think,
i-in a way in which
we can understand and deal with it.
(BELL RINGING DISTANTLY)
HORNICK: People that had been locked
up in those terrible carriages
were gasping for air.
Suddenly we heard
this terrible clinking
and they...
took off the chains,
and the doors opened.
Well, the sight that greeted us
was beyond anybody's imagination.
Dogs were barking viciously,
soldiers marching up and down
with guns on their shoulders,
and there was just
a general sense of panic.
(BELL RINGING DISTANTLY)
When transport arrived,
the symphony orchestra was playing.
I saw them playing when we arrived,
and I couldn't imagine, I never
heard playing so beautifully,
because the place where I come from,
there was no symphony orchestra.
So, when such a beautiful music,
well, you don't think
of something bad.
GEYER: The women's orchestra
was based in the largest camp,
Auschwitz II Birkenau...
in barracks that were
next to the main railway
where most people arrived.
They often performed
in view of the railway
and the nearby crematoria.
We know from survivor testimonies
that Eine kleine Nachtmusik
by Mozart
was one of the pieces that
the women's orchestra performed.
I've managed to research
what instruments were available
at the time,
and that comprises
of a very unbalanced orchestra
of very bizarre instruments,
and this creates a very,
very distinctive sound.
MOZART:
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Mvt.1
It's difficult to imagine
a more macabre setting
for music-making.
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
HORNICK: Mothers and children
were taken to the left.
We did look back
and we saw our mother.
She had a spotted scarf on her head
and we waved to her.
We didn't see our little brothers
because he was, um...
um, they were small
and in the crowd they were lost.
We were being...
directed through...
the main gate.
The smell was terrible,
and we didn't know what it was.
And this sort of grey,
greasy ash falling down.
We were taken in to block 14...
and we were crying,
my sister and I,
and there was a lady there
who was fed up with us crying.
Well, she must have been
already seasoned,
she'd been there a while.
She said, "Don't be stupid,
you aren't going to see your mother.
Can you see that smoke coming up
and all that dirty ash
falling around us?
That's where your mother's gone."
PERL: Marching was a completely
daily event.
But when you say marching,
you visualise a nice
marching there but...
but, uh...
you're talking about crawling along
rather than marching.
And quite a marching out,
uh, quite often...
it wasn't unusual for people
never to return back.
ROSENBURG:
Normally when you went out to work,
there was a 50-piece orchestra
playing and you were
marching to that.
And, uh...
when you came back,
(SINGS)Bur-um-pum-pum-pum-pum
pum-pur-um, pum-pu-pum,
pu-pu-rum, bum-bu-bum, bum-bu-bum.
And you'd march,
no matter how tired you were.
As it came before the gate,
it was "Achtung, attention,
straighten out your lines,
count them."
And the kapot would march and yell,
commander number so-and-so,
54 people, 75 people,
and marching right through
and being counted.
We knew we were gonna march out,
we heard music,
"OK, well we're going to work again,
what's gonna happen today?
Will I ever get back?"
I thought, "Hell is here
and there they're making music.
Why, why?"
And that's how it was.
Arbeitslager Marsch
by Henryk Krol is the only
example that we have of a march
written by a prisoner.
And the story of this piece
was that he wrote it in Auschwitz,
and it was played many,
many times when it was there.
A fellow prisoner was able
to take the music from Auschwitz
and return it to Henryk Krol
after the war.
Today, we don't actually have
the full score, but I've managed
to research what instruments
were available at that time,
such as accordion and saxophone,
which we wouldn't usually
expect in an orchestra.
It feels to me that there is
a hidden message to this music,
and we can tell that from
the dissonance in the melodic lines
and the countermelodies,
as well as a prolonged passage
in the minor key.
This marching music
is very difficult
because we know
that this was the backdrop
to really unimaginable horrors.
(MUSIC FADES TO BACKGROUND)
KROL: It was bearable in the morning
when the prisoners still marched
somewhat normal.
But in the afternoon,
the sight was horrific.
As the concert master, I stood
at the very edge of the orchestra,
so I had the closest view
of the prisoners passing by.
I will never forget
the day I had to watch
as the body of my friend
was carried in.
Two prisoners were carrying him,
one at the front
and one at the back,
and the ways his limbs hang down
only intensified
the horror of the spectacle.
("ARBEITSLAGER MARSCH" CONTINUES)
JUHN: When we came back from work,
we had to march past
the orchestra
which was playing, and...
people that were...
beaten to death or shot
were...
before the orchestra, displayed.
Dead people propped up on chairs.
We had to march past,
to take our hats off
and look at them.
("ARBEITSLAGER MARSCH" CONTINUES)
(MUSIC SOFTENS)
(MUSIC FADES, ENDS)
(BIRDSONG)
I was 12 years and three months old.
We never had the luxury
of even...
thinking more than one day ahead.
They dehumanised us.
We're not humans anymore.
We went to this little room
and there was a lady there.
She says, "You say you play music?"
I said, "Yes, the accordion."
She says, "Here, play something,"
she gave me an accordion.
I knew everything by heart,
so I play for her
and she says, "Good."
They said that
the Kommandant decided
to make an orchestra.
I say, "An orchestra here?"
Everybody who was on a special work,
like kitchen or musician
or people who work cleaning up,
um, then they're...
they were all leaving separately
from the other one,
and they had all more than we had.
They all had
a little bit better of food.
WONTOR-CICHY: To stay healthy,
to stay clean,
to stay not exhausted,
was much easier in the orchestra
comparing to the other units.
But to be part of the orchestra,
uh, was not an easy, uh, story.
They have to take the exam;
basically play
in front of the prisoner
who was appointed to be
their conductor,
and they have to play, uh...
play well.
A Romani violinist,
he played the fiddle beautifully
without knowing
how to read music at all;
a man with perfect pitch.
I was present when his
transport arrived.
When he was stripped naked,
he cried and begs to be allowed
to keep his violin.
He did not want to part with it
under any circumstances.
He gave an extraordinary
demonstration of his ability.
Completely naked,
he played as if in a trance,
wringing sobbing tones
from the fiddle.
This decided his immediate
inclusion in the camp orchestra.
For Roma people,
music and dance and family
are probably the...
the three most important things.
Taking his violin and his music
was just like taking his life.
This composition, it's written
in memory of Jakub Segar,
who was, just like myself,
an Eastern European violinist,
uh, violinist and musician
of, uh, Roma ethnicity.
We are standing at
the Alte Judenrampe.
This must probably have been
the exact point
where he and other victims
got off from the train.
The pain of... of his
can be felt in the air, I think.
GEYER: Jakub Segar was one of
the few Romani musicians
in the Auschwitz 1 Orchestra,
and I think the story
of his recruitment is astonishing.
He was clearly one of the most
gifted violinists,
with the ability
to hear a melody once
and play it back perfectly.
And so in his honour,
I've written this solo violin piece,
drawing on Romani
musical traditions.
This violin is an...
extremely special violin
because, uh...
this violin was here in-in Auschwitz
in the... in the camp
and played by
one of the survivors
who was here in Auschwitz.
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
(BIRD CHIRPING)
MEYER: There were certain moments
where we had to entertain the SS.
We played popular tunes
and we played potpourris,
we played waltzes, tangos.
Either they brought them from home
and said could you play that for us,
and we would,
or they were popular tunes
and we knew that they liked it.
The Nazis was going to
come and visit us.
They come to have a rest after
the killing that they did,
they're gonna have some music.
MAYER: Believe me, it was
a fantastic, first class orchestra.
It was part of their, um...
enjoyment, the German's enjoyment,
to be sarcastic, to uh,
to give us extra pain, I-I felt.
GEYER: "Nie war Musik so shon" or
"Never Has Music Been So Beautiful"
was requested by SS soldiers
in Auschwitz.
This piece is an example
of one of the foxtrots
popular in Nazi Germany.
To try and understand
the full picture of this arrangement
that was made in Auschwitz,
requires quite a lot
of musical detective work.
As well as referring to
the manuscripts in the archive,
I also referenced recordings
made in Nazi Germany
to recompose the missing gaps.
I think this piece is
the most difficult for us
as musicians to perform,
because...
it's in many ways a beautiful
piece of music, it's luscious.
We are playing in a style
similar to that in Nazi Germany,
so that has this
sweet-sounding vibrato,
the sliding in the strings.
But we have to remember
that this was a piece
that was performed
for the SS on demand,
and many, many people
did find this horrific at the time.
CASIROLI: Nie War Musik So Shon
(MUSIC FADES TO BACKGROUND)
The SS men were
sitting there, you know,
comfortably,
drinking their beers or whatever,
and amusing themselves.
Bottles of beer were rolled in
one after the other.
The corks from bottles of champagne
shot into the air with a bang,
and sausage and roast chicken
steamed on the trays.
MARKSTEIN: They loved the music.
And I was standing there
and I thought to myself
once the sun was shining...
and I said, "Where am I?
What's happening to us?
Where is God?
Where is God? Where was this?
Where is the whole world?
Nobody cares about us,
nobody gives a damn what is...
what is happening here?"
("NIE WAR MUSIK SO SHON" CONTINUES)
(MUSIC FADES, ENDS)
(CLOCK TICKING)
We were so fearful.
We were so obedient.
They're-They're just... (SIGHS)
fr-frightening...
frightening, some sort of...
some sort of dangerous...
wild and-and hateful people.
HORNICK: A miracle happened.
My mother's old assistant,
two older cousins,
were in block 16.
And she came to find us,
and um, we were terribly distressed,
and she managed to exchange
with another two people.
I mean, to do that,
you could be whipped to death,
but she managed to exchange us
to her block,
and really took care of us.
So, we were so very lucky.
I came out with my life.
To what do I owe this?
For me, there is no doubt
that I owe this to an unending
series of miracles.
I was helped in this by music,
and so many times I had been told
that one could not survive by music.
One evening,
I found lying on the ground
a crumpled and greasy piece of paper
covered with writing
that attracted my attention.
It smelled of herring
and God only knows what else,
but it was music.
Only the melody,
written by hand but very legibly,
without harmonisation,
without accompaniment.
The title at the top read
"Three Warsaw Polonaises
of the 18th Century"
Author: "Anonymous."
On the greasy piece of paper
that Szymon Laks found
was just a single melodic line,
and so Laks made the decision
to then orchestrate that
for quartet.
Crucially, he didn't say
what quartet he wrote it for.
When I looked at
the instruments that I know
were available to Laks at that time,
for me it felt like a violin,
accordion, a clarinet,
and double bass seemed the most
appropriate instruments
to bring out
the nature of the music.
Given that this piece
was an emphatic
presentation of Polish music,
it would have been forbidden,
which is why we know
that Szymon Laks
performed this piece secretly.
SZYMON LAKS:
Warsaw Polonaise No.2
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
Nobody survived
without luck, nobody.
But not everybody
that had luck survived.
Well, I come from a family of 11
and the only one that survived
was me and my brother, Alec.
Alec was two years older than me,
and I thank God
that without him being there,
I-I don't think
I would have survived.
Most people survived in pairs...
and if they didn't have
a brother or a sister,
they would find a friend
to hang on to.
'Cause when you are in
that sort of dire... position,
you try to live for each other.
MARKSTEIN: The crematorium
worked full speed,
day and night.
Thick smoke with flames
that you could see and the smell,
of burning human flesh.
And it was so nauseating.
We had it under our skin.
We couldn't get rid of it,
not day and not night, never.
HORNICK: We came with the last
transport of the Hungarian Jews,
and those crematoria
were going day and night
on those transports.
Himmler, um, wanted...
as many burned as possible,
and thousands...
thousands were burned in a day.
The gas chambers were very
close to the orchestra.
You see, where we were,
say if you walk
a block or two blocks at the most,
the gas chambers were there,
and we could see them.
The women's orchestra performed
very close to the crematorium.
Chopin's Tristesse Etude
or Sadness Etude
was a arrangement
that was made by Alma Rose,
the conductor of the
women's orchestra.
There are no manuscripts
that survived
from the women's orchestra,
but one of the violinists remembered
intrinsic details of this
performance and arrangement,
and I've been able to refer to her
notes about this to the letter.
This piece was performed
in the women's barracks
where they both rehearsed and lived,
and they performed
this piece secretly
and very much for themselves.
I'm Jewish and, uh,
most of my family died in Auschwitz.
My, uh, great grandfather
and his wife
and their two children,
um, they fled Belgium in 1940,
which is why I'm here. Um, but...
the eight brothers and sisters
on either side,
uh, didn't leave,
and they were taken away
by the Nazis
and taken to Auschwitz.
They all died.
Um, we've got photos at home
of little cousins,
and knowing that-that
they didn't make it.
The song is about, um...
a woman who has a song within her,
a beautiful song,
but then at the end she says,
but I don't want it
in me anymore, so...
my interpretation is that
she wants to be able
to express herself,
she wants to be able to perform it
and sing it,
or for somebody to sing it.
But she can't express herself,
uh, because...
she's in Auschwitz.
I'm singing this piece
for all the people
that didn't survive Auschwitz,
including Alma Rose,
who wrote the piece.
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BEGINS)
(SINGS IN GERMAN)
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
(LEAVES RUSTLE GENTLY)
PERL: My brother, David,
he was the eldest.
He was old enough,
he was 22-years-old,
and he was old enough
to go into the Sondercommando.
The Sondercommando are the people
who worked in the crematoria,
and they were kept separate to us.
The only way we knew
that he was there is that we were...
we had a parcel of food
thrown over the...
for the wire, the barbed wires,
and after a while it stopped.
And we never-never
heard or seen him since.
But we found out that usually
they themselves used to be, uh,
liq-liquidated after
three or four weeks.
The horror is just unimaginable.
WONTOR-CICHY: Sondercommando
was a very special unit.
Young, healthy, most were Jewish.
They have to take the corpses
of the people murdered
in the gas chamber
and carry them to crematorias,
carry them for burning.
And they wanted to send
a message outside
to try to inform the world
about the crime committed.
A camera was smuggled
into this very close area
of Sondercommando...
and a few photographs were taken.
One of the photo
they decided to take
is a little field
and some people standing;
standing around something
what is on the ground:
corpses of people that were murdered
a few minutes before.
And they cannot
be burned in crematorium
because the crematorium
is either damaged
or is just too small
to burn all the bodies
of the people murdered
in the gas chamber
within this period of time.
(UNEASY TONE)
The one thing I can never,
ever forget is...
looking back
and waving at our mother.
Yeah.
I will never forget how,
after the memorable
mass execution of the prisoners
from the Silesian transport,
which shook the entire camp,
Kopycinski sat down at the piano
and played Chopin's
Revolutionary Etude.
It was summer, in the afternoon,
the windows of the music hall
were wide open,
and the music could be heard
not only throughout the camp,
but also in the SS-occupied
buildings across the wire.
It took extraordinary courage
to do something like that.
The piece Adam Kopycinski played
was Chopin's Revolutionary Etude,
and you can understand why
he made that decision.
That particular piece has been
associated with Polish resistance
for many years before that point.
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
Music does have the ability
to speak beyond specific meaning,
and therefore
music can be very valuable
as a way in
to try and engage with the Holocaust
and find the right
emotion and feelings.
This is one of the most
delicate manuscripts.
It's written in faded pencil.
And tucked inside... these pages
we will find something
very special.
This was the manuscript
that set me on this path
eight years ago.
This is an unsigned,
unfinished manuscript.
When I first saw it,
I had goosebumps
down the back of my neck,
because the handwriting
is the exact same as mine.
And so I felt it was
my duty to finish it.
We can tell it's a sketch
because we can see
these rubbings out,
which shows that our composer
changed his mind as he was writing.
Importantly, also here at the end,
there's no double bar line,
it's just a normal bar,
which means that the piece
is not finished.
It is in fact a short score
for a much larger instrumentation.
A sketch for something bigger.
The title, at least we think,
is "Daremne Zale,"
and this is Polish
for "Futile Regrets."
This piece has been haunting me
for eight years...
because I still
don't know who it's by,
and the only clue...
is the handwriting itself.
(HUMS MELODY)
(CONTINUES HUMMING MELODY)
(HUMMING BEGINS TO FADE)
(HUMMING FADES, ENDS)
(LEAVES RUSTLE)
POLLACK:
The Allied Forces were coming!
And lo and behold...
I feel a pair of hands...
a gentle pair of hands...
lifting me up...
and putting me in
a waiting ambulance.
And it was warm...
with gentle voices.
If they spoke just German, no.
They spoke and said...
"Hold on."
I remember it so clearly.
The fact that we were given a dress
and a coat
and shoes,
that was a ray of hope
that we might survive...
by, um... by leaving Auschwitz.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
We'd pass for the last time
by the buildings
we have walked past daily for years,
and suddenly,
somewhere ahead a song rises;
a Polish song of course,
light-hearted and carefree.
And our dread of the guards fades.
Our sorrows melt away.
At Katowice Station,
the air echoed with a bugle call
from St. Mary's Tower,
and Polish songs played
by the Auschwitz Orchestra,
which was allowed to bring
their instruments.
Placed in a single train car,
they played a farewell.
(SPEAKS POLISH)
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
I'm trying to find out
who wrote the unfinished
musical sketch "Daremne Zale."
When I found it
in the Auschwitz archives,
it was tucked into
the first part of a 19th century
Polish operetta that had been
copied out by hand.
(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
Just over there, straight.
I eventually tracked down
the other half of the operetta
in the Polish National Library,
and more importantly,
the name of the copyist,
Mieczyslaw Krzynski.
We know from
Krzynski's prisoner number
that he arrived in Auschwitz
on the 17th of April 1942.
Krzynski was the deputy conductor
of the Auschwitz 1 Orchestra,
so not only was he
making arrangements,
but he was also copying the various
parts for all the players.
(SPEAKS POLISH)
My hunch is that Krzynski
wrote Daremne Zale,
but to know for sure,
I need to compare the writing
on the two manuscripts.
So, this is the...
the name of the operetta itself.
All we need now is the signature.
And here it is.
1935, so that's the date
this was written,
before the war,
but most importantly,
most interestingly, the signature:
"M. K."
And that stands for
Mieczyslaw Krzynski.
So, one of the ways we can tell
who the author is from a manuscript
is the treble clef.
And every composer writes
their treble clef differently.
So, if we compare these
to our unsigned and unfinished
composition sketch...
there's a very striking similarity
between the two.
So, we can see that it has the same
swivel shape here,
and also the top
of the treble clef here
doesn't have the circle
that we would expect to see.
The other aspect to look at is
the notes themselves.
So, in many cases, such as here,
we can see that
our composer has written
the notehead first,
and then somewhat
hurriedly afterwards
has drawn the stem
and then the bean.
And again this matches exactly
with that of the composition sketch
in the archive.
The similarity is just so striking
that it tells us that this
really must be by the same hand.
My brother, Mieczyslaw Krzynski,
was a professor of music
and a composer
who wrote and composed
the missing pieces
for the various instruments
that were not available.
He played a tuba
in the brass and the violin
in the string orchestra.
I think the reason why
Mieczyslaw Krzynski
didn't finish his piece
was because he couldn't perform it.
It is a piece that is
deeply sorrowful,
and I can't imagine any context
in which that
would have been allowed.
That piece was written
for himself, I think,
and finally,
we are giving voice to him.
And I can only hope that...
he's pleased with what I've done.
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BEGINS SOFTLY)
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONCLUDES)
PERL: Afterwards...
I think we were scared.
Scared to face reality.
I think, my whole life,
all I wanted to do
is go through life
without getting any punishment.
I'd try not to look at people,
I'd try not to ask questions.
All of us had problems...
and life had a different meaning.
Entirely different meaning.
When I go round
and talk about my experiences,
it's painful,
but I feel as though...
that humanity has got to learn,
and if humanity doesn't learn,
it will happen again
and again and again.
It might come
in a different overcoat,
but one has to be very careful.
(BIRDSONG)
HORNICK: So, I find great...
comfort when I come out here.
Whatever I have on my mind,
I come out into the garden.
It's just lovely.
It is very, very important
that, uh, people should hear
and, um, that is the reason at 95
I am still willing
to go and talk to young people,
because they all tell me
it's different
to hear our, uh,
testimonies of survivors.
I just feel very lucky to have
come out alive, out of there,
and reasonably sane, I think.
(LAUGHS)
(CLOCK TICKING)
They took me
and a few others
who so managed to survive...
to Sweden...
for our recovery.
And that was...
magic.
And every night
we listened to music,
and I interpreted that music...
for my life.
How the tragedy
destroyed everyone
in my family;
more than 50 members I lost.
And every night...
that was our spiritual recovery.
That there is...
perhaps beauty in the world.
Perhaps.
"The following programme contains
scenes which some viewers may find
distressing."
(RAIN PATTERS)
POLLACK: Myself and all the others
realised...
this is a place
where...
hate... and terror
were beyond anything we had seen.
We were so fearful.
Constant fear.
We were terrified.
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BUILDS)
GEYER: Auschwitz was
the largest death camp
the world has ever seen.
Around 1.1 million people
perished here.
Of those, one million were Jewish,
70,000 were Polish,
and 21,000 were Romani
and Sinti people.
Auschwitz was also home
to at least six orchestras,
formed of prisoners
and commissioned by the Nazis.
This music was part
of the infrastructure of the camp.
Music was weaponised.
I'm a classical composer
and conductor.
For the last eight years,
I've been piecing together
the fragments
of the music manuscripts
that remain.
Hidden in the notes,
there are many examples
of where musicians rebelled...
with secret performances
and weaving forbidden melodies
into concerts.
All of these stories
are very special.
I've been trying to understand
what the music would have
sounded like in Auschwitz
so that we can finally
hear this music,
in some cases,
for the first time in 80 years.
EDITH: We were standing outside
in front of that gate,
and there was that famous music
which used to play in Auschwitz.
Practically everybody cried,
we never cried.
You suddenly remembered,
"Oh, there was a world
which we used to know."
MOZART:
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Mvt.1
(MUSIC FADES, ENDS)
I've been to Auschwitz ten times,
and on each trip,
here for several days.
Hiya, Leo.
Good to see you again.
Please come in.
Thank you.
'So, a very long time.'
Please sit down.
Thank you.
The collection department
in Auschwitz houses
all kinds of different artefacts
that relate to the camp's existence,
and this includes
artworks, musical instruments,
and also music manuscripts.
Thank you very much, Jan, thank you.
I first came to the collections
department eight years ago
and I had a conversation
with one of the archivists,
and he mentioned to me
in a somewhat offhand way
that there were
some music manuscripts
in the collections department.
I couldn't believe
that such a thing existed.
This is an example
of one of the parts in the archive,
and we can see it's very damaged
and the title is missing,
the instrument is missing,
but this is one of the pieces
of the jigsaw.
And I know because
of the range of the part
that this is a violin two part.
None of these manuscripts
are complete,
so the challenge
for me as a composer
is to try and,
authentically as possible,
complete the gaps.
It becomes even more complicated
to make the arrangements
because you didn't have
the same players day in
and day out because tragically
the musicians were dying.
And so I've had to research
testimonies, refer to photos,
to try and understand
exactly who was there at that time
to get to the sound
as purely as possible.
Following my conversations
with survivors,
one of the most
important things for them
is that we inherit the truth.
Music is an abstract artform,
and therefore music can
speak beyond words.
And with something so enormous
and of such gravity
as the Holocaust,
actually music is helpful, I think,
i-in a way in which
we can understand and deal with it.
(BELL RINGING DISTANTLY)
HORNICK: People that had been locked
up in those terrible carriages
were gasping for air.
Suddenly we heard
this terrible clinking
and they...
took off the chains,
and the doors opened.
Well, the sight that greeted us
was beyond anybody's imagination.
Dogs were barking viciously,
soldiers marching up and down
with guns on their shoulders,
and there was just
a general sense of panic.
(BELL RINGING DISTANTLY)
When transport arrived,
the symphony orchestra was playing.
I saw them playing when we arrived,
and I couldn't imagine, I never
heard playing so beautifully,
because the place where I come from,
there was no symphony orchestra.
So, when such a beautiful music,
well, you don't think
of something bad.
GEYER: The women's orchestra
was based in the largest camp,
Auschwitz II Birkenau...
in barracks that were
next to the main railway
where most people arrived.
They often performed
in view of the railway
and the nearby crematoria.
We know from survivor testimonies
that Eine kleine Nachtmusik
by Mozart
was one of the pieces that
the women's orchestra performed.
I've managed to research
what instruments were available
at the time,
and that comprises
of a very unbalanced orchestra
of very bizarre instruments,
and this creates a very,
very distinctive sound.
MOZART:
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Mvt.1
It's difficult to imagine
a more macabre setting
for music-making.
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
HORNICK: Mothers and children
were taken to the left.
We did look back
and we saw our mother.
She had a spotted scarf on her head
and we waved to her.
We didn't see our little brothers
because he was, um...
um, they were small
and in the crowd they were lost.
We were being...
directed through...
the main gate.
The smell was terrible,
and we didn't know what it was.
And this sort of grey,
greasy ash falling down.
We were taken in to block 14...
and we were crying,
my sister and I,
and there was a lady there
who was fed up with us crying.
Well, she must have been
already seasoned,
she'd been there a while.
She said, "Don't be stupid,
you aren't going to see your mother.
Can you see that smoke coming up
and all that dirty ash
falling around us?
That's where your mother's gone."
PERL: Marching was a completely
daily event.
But when you say marching,
you visualise a nice
marching there but...
but, uh...
you're talking about crawling along
rather than marching.
And quite a marching out,
uh, quite often...
it wasn't unusual for people
never to return back.
ROSENBURG:
Normally when you went out to work,
there was a 50-piece orchestra
playing and you were
marching to that.
And, uh...
when you came back,
(SINGS)Bur-um-pum-pum-pum-pum
pum-pur-um, pum-pu-pum,
pu-pu-rum, bum-bu-bum, bum-bu-bum.
And you'd march,
no matter how tired you were.
As it came before the gate,
it was "Achtung, attention,
straighten out your lines,
count them."
And the kapot would march and yell,
commander number so-and-so,
54 people, 75 people,
and marching right through
and being counted.
We knew we were gonna march out,
we heard music,
"OK, well we're going to work again,
what's gonna happen today?
Will I ever get back?"
I thought, "Hell is here
and there they're making music.
Why, why?"
And that's how it was.
Arbeitslager Marsch
by Henryk Krol is the only
example that we have of a march
written by a prisoner.
And the story of this piece
was that he wrote it in Auschwitz,
and it was played many,
many times when it was there.
A fellow prisoner was able
to take the music from Auschwitz
and return it to Henryk Krol
after the war.
Today, we don't actually have
the full score, but I've managed
to research what instruments
were available at that time,
such as accordion and saxophone,
which we wouldn't usually
expect in an orchestra.
It feels to me that there is
a hidden message to this music,
and we can tell that from
the dissonance in the melodic lines
and the countermelodies,
as well as a prolonged passage
in the minor key.
This marching music
is very difficult
because we know
that this was the backdrop
to really unimaginable horrors.
(MUSIC FADES TO BACKGROUND)
KROL: It was bearable in the morning
when the prisoners still marched
somewhat normal.
But in the afternoon,
the sight was horrific.
As the concert master, I stood
at the very edge of the orchestra,
so I had the closest view
of the prisoners passing by.
I will never forget
the day I had to watch
as the body of my friend
was carried in.
Two prisoners were carrying him,
one at the front
and one at the back,
and the ways his limbs hang down
only intensified
the horror of the spectacle.
("ARBEITSLAGER MARSCH" CONTINUES)
JUHN: When we came back from work,
we had to march past
the orchestra
which was playing, and...
people that were...
beaten to death or shot
were...
before the orchestra, displayed.
Dead people propped up on chairs.
We had to march past,
to take our hats off
and look at them.
("ARBEITSLAGER MARSCH" CONTINUES)
(MUSIC SOFTENS)
(MUSIC FADES, ENDS)
(BIRDSONG)
I was 12 years and three months old.
We never had the luxury
of even...
thinking more than one day ahead.
They dehumanised us.
We're not humans anymore.
We went to this little room
and there was a lady there.
She says, "You say you play music?"
I said, "Yes, the accordion."
She says, "Here, play something,"
she gave me an accordion.
I knew everything by heart,
so I play for her
and she says, "Good."
They said that
the Kommandant decided
to make an orchestra.
I say, "An orchestra here?"
Everybody who was on a special work,
like kitchen or musician
or people who work cleaning up,
um, then they're...
they were all leaving separately
from the other one,
and they had all more than we had.
They all had
a little bit better of food.
WONTOR-CICHY: To stay healthy,
to stay clean,
to stay not exhausted,
was much easier in the orchestra
comparing to the other units.
But to be part of the orchestra,
uh, was not an easy, uh, story.
They have to take the exam;
basically play
in front of the prisoner
who was appointed to be
their conductor,
and they have to play, uh...
play well.
A Romani violinist,
he played the fiddle beautifully
without knowing
how to read music at all;
a man with perfect pitch.
I was present when his
transport arrived.
When he was stripped naked,
he cried and begs to be allowed
to keep his violin.
He did not want to part with it
under any circumstances.
He gave an extraordinary
demonstration of his ability.
Completely naked,
he played as if in a trance,
wringing sobbing tones
from the fiddle.
This decided his immediate
inclusion in the camp orchestra.
For Roma people,
music and dance and family
are probably the...
the three most important things.
Taking his violin and his music
was just like taking his life.
This composition, it's written
in memory of Jakub Segar,
who was, just like myself,
an Eastern European violinist,
uh, violinist and musician
of, uh, Roma ethnicity.
We are standing at
the Alte Judenrampe.
This must probably have been
the exact point
where he and other victims
got off from the train.
The pain of... of his
can be felt in the air, I think.
GEYER: Jakub Segar was one of
the few Romani musicians
in the Auschwitz 1 Orchestra,
and I think the story
of his recruitment is astonishing.
He was clearly one of the most
gifted violinists,
with the ability
to hear a melody once
and play it back perfectly.
And so in his honour,
I've written this solo violin piece,
drawing on Romani
musical traditions.
This violin is an...
extremely special violin
because, uh...
this violin was here in-in Auschwitz
in the... in the camp
and played by
one of the survivors
who was here in Auschwitz.
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
(BIRD CHIRPING)
MEYER: There were certain moments
where we had to entertain the SS.
We played popular tunes
and we played potpourris,
we played waltzes, tangos.
Either they brought them from home
and said could you play that for us,
and we would,
or they were popular tunes
and we knew that they liked it.
The Nazis was going to
come and visit us.
They come to have a rest after
the killing that they did,
they're gonna have some music.
MAYER: Believe me, it was
a fantastic, first class orchestra.
It was part of their, um...
enjoyment, the German's enjoyment,
to be sarcastic, to uh,
to give us extra pain, I-I felt.
GEYER: "Nie war Musik so shon" or
"Never Has Music Been So Beautiful"
was requested by SS soldiers
in Auschwitz.
This piece is an example
of one of the foxtrots
popular in Nazi Germany.
To try and understand
the full picture of this arrangement
that was made in Auschwitz,
requires quite a lot
of musical detective work.
As well as referring to
the manuscripts in the archive,
I also referenced recordings
made in Nazi Germany
to recompose the missing gaps.
I think this piece is
the most difficult for us
as musicians to perform,
because...
it's in many ways a beautiful
piece of music, it's luscious.
We are playing in a style
similar to that in Nazi Germany,
so that has this
sweet-sounding vibrato,
the sliding in the strings.
But we have to remember
that this was a piece
that was performed
for the SS on demand,
and many, many people
did find this horrific at the time.
CASIROLI: Nie War Musik So Shon
(MUSIC FADES TO BACKGROUND)
The SS men were
sitting there, you know,
comfortably,
drinking their beers or whatever,
and amusing themselves.
Bottles of beer were rolled in
one after the other.
The corks from bottles of champagne
shot into the air with a bang,
and sausage and roast chicken
steamed on the trays.
MARKSTEIN: They loved the music.
And I was standing there
and I thought to myself
once the sun was shining...
and I said, "Where am I?
What's happening to us?
Where is God?
Where is God? Where was this?
Where is the whole world?
Nobody cares about us,
nobody gives a damn what is...
what is happening here?"
("NIE WAR MUSIK SO SHON" CONTINUES)
(MUSIC FADES, ENDS)
(CLOCK TICKING)
We were so fearful.
We were so obedient.
They're-They're just... (SIGHS)
fr-frightening...
frightening, some sort of...
some sort of dangerous...
wild and-and hateful people.
HORNICK: A miracle happened.
My mother's old assistant,
two older cousins,
were in block 16.
And she came to find us,
and um, we were terribly distressed,
and she managed to exchange
with another two people.
I mean, to do that,
you could be whipped to death,
but she managed to exchange us
to her block,
and really took care of us.
So, we were so very lucky.
I came out with my life.
To what do I owe this?
For me, there is no doubt
that I owe this to an unending
series of miracles.
I was helped in this by music,
and so many times I had been told
that one could not survive by music.
One evening,
I found lying on the ground
a crumpled and greasy piece of paper
covered with writing
that attracted my attention.
It smelled of herring
and God only knows what else,
but it was music.
Only the melody,
written by hand but very legibly,
without harmonisation,
without accompaniment.
The title at the top read
"Three Warsaw Polonaises
of the 18th Century"
Author: "Anonymous."
On the greasy piece of paper
that Szymon Laks found
was just a single melodic line,
and so Laks made the decision
to then orchestrate that
for quartet.
Crucially, he didn't say
what quartet he wrote it for.
When I looked at
the instruments that I know
were available to Laks at that time,
for me it felt like a violin,
accordion, a clarinet,
and double bass seemed the most
appropriate instruments
to bring out
the nature of the music.
Given that this piece
was an emphatic
presentation of Polish music,
it would have been forbidden,
which is why we know
that Szymon Laks
performed this piece secretly.
SZYMON LAKS:
Warsaw Polonaise No.2
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
Nobody survived
without luck, nobody.
But not everybody
that had luck survived.
Well, I come from a family of 11
and the only one that survived
was me and my brother, Alec.
Alec was two years older than me,
and I thank God
that without him being there,
I-I don't think
I would have survived.
Most people survived in pairs...
and if they didn't have
a brother or a sister,
they would find a friend
to hang on to.
'Cause when you are in
that sort of dire... position,
you try to live for each other.
MARKSTEIN: The crematorium
worked full speed,
day and night.
Thick smoke with flames
that you could see and the smell,
of burning human flesh.
And it was so nauseating.
We had it under our skin.
We couldn't get rid of it,
not day and not night, never.
HORNICK: We came with the last
transport of the Hungarian Jews,
and those crematoria
were going day and night
on those transports.
Himmler, um, wanted...
as many burned as possible,
and thousands...
thousands were burned in a day.
The gas chambers were very
close to the orchestra.
You see, where we were,
say if you walk
a block or two blocks at the most,
the gas chambers were there,
and we could see them.
The women's orchestra performed
very close to the crematorium.
Chopin's Tristesse Etude
or Sadness Etude
was a arrangement
that was made by Alma Rose,
the conductor of the
women's orchestra.
There are no manuscripts
that survived
from the women's orchestra,
but one of the violinists remembered
intrinsic details of this
performance and arrangement,
and I've been able to refer to her
notes about this to the letter.
This piece was performed
in the women's barracks
where they both rehearsed and lived,
and they performed
this piece secretly
and very much for themselves.
I'm Jewish and, uh,
most of my family died in Auschwitz.
My, uh, great grandfather
and his wife
and their two children,
um, they fled Belgium in 1940,
which is why I'm here. Um, but...
the eight brothers and sisters
on either side,
uh, didn't leave,
and they were taken away
by the Nazis
and taken to Auschwitz.
They all died.
Um, we've got photos at home
of little cousins,
and knowing that-that
they didn't make it.
The song is about, um...
a woman who has a song within her,
a beautiful song,
but then at the end she says,
but I don't want it
in me anymore, so...
my interpretation is that
she wants to be able
to express herself,
she wants to be able to perform it
and sing it,
or for somebody to sing it.
But she can't express herself,
uh, because...
she's in Auschwitz.
I'm singing this piece
for all the people
that didn't survive Auschwitz,
including Alma Rose,
who wrote the piece.
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BEGINS)
(SINGS IN GERMAN)
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
(LEAVES RUSTLE GENTLY)
PERL: My brother, David,
he was the eldest.
He was old enough,
he was 22-years-old,
and he was old enough
to go into the Sondercommando.
The Sondercommando are the people
who worked in the crematoria,
and they were kept separate to us.
The only way we knew
that he was there is that we were...
we had a parcel of food
thrown over the...
for the wire, the barbed wires,
and after a while it stopped.
And we never-never
heard or seen him since.
But we found out that usually
they themselves used to be, uh,
liq-liquidated after
three or four weeks.
The horror is just unimaginable.
WONTOR-CICHY: Sondercommando
was a very special unit.
Young, healthy, most were Jewish.
They have to take the corpses
of the people murdered
in the gas chamber
and carry them to crematorias,
carry them for burning.
And they wanted to send
a message outside
to try to inform the world
about the crime committed.
A camera was smuggled
into this very close area
of Sondercommando...
and a few photographs were taken.
One of the photo
they decided to take
is a little field
and some people standing;
standing around something
what is on the ground:
corpses of people that were murdered
a few minutes before.
And they cannot
be burned in crematorium
because the crematorium
is either damaged
or is just too small
to burn all the bodies
of the people murdered
in the gas chamber
within this period of time.
(UNEASY TONE)
The one thing I can never,
ever forget is...
looking back
and waving at our mother.
Yeah.
I will never forget how,
after the memorable
mass execution of the prisoners
from the Silesian transport,
which shook the entire camp,
Kopycinski sat down at the piano
and played Chopin's
Revolutionary Etude.
It was summer, in the afternoon,
the windows of the music hall
were wide open,
and the music could be heard
not only throughout the camp,
but also in the SS-occupied
buildings across the wire.
It took extraordinary courage
to do something like that.
The piece Adam Kopycinski played
was Chopin's Revolutionary Etude,
and you can understand why
he made that decision.
That particular piece has been
associated with Polish resistance
for many years before that point.
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
Music does have the ability
to speak beyond specific meaning,
and therefore
music can be very valuable
as a way in
to try and engage with the Holocaust
and find the right
emotion and feelings.
This is one of the most
delicate manuscripts.
It's written in faded pencil.
And tucked inside... these pages
we will find something
very special.
This was the manuscript
that set me on this path
eight years ago.
This is an unsigned,
unfinished manuscript.
When I first saw it,
I had goosebumps
down the back of my neck,
because the handwriting
is the exact same as mine.
And so I felt it was
my duty to finish it.
We can tell it's a sketch
because we can see
these rubbings out,
which shows that our composer
changed his mind as he was writing.
Importantly, also here at the end,
there's no double bar line,
it's just a normal bar,
which means that the piece
is not finished.
It is in fact a short score
for a much larger instrumentation.
A sketch for something bigger.
The title, at least we think,
is "Daremne Zale,"
and this is Polish
for "Futile Regrets."
This piece has been haunting me
for eight years...
because I still
don't know who it's by,
and the only clue...
is the handwriting itself.
(HUMS MELODY)
(CONTINUES HUMMING MELODY)
(HUMMING BEGINS TO FADE)
(HUMMING FADES, ENDS)
(LEAVES RUSTLE)
POLLACK:
The Allied Forces were coming!
And lo and behold...
I feel a pair of hands...
a gentle pair of hands...
lifting me up...
and putting me in
a waiting ambulance.
And it was warm...
with gentle voices.
If they spoke just German, no.
They spoke and said...
"Hold on."
I remember it so clearly.
The fact that we were given a dress
and a coat
and shoes,
that was a ray of hope
that we might survive...
by, um... by leaving Auschwitz.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
We'd pass for the last time
by the buildings
we have walked past daily for years,
and suddenly,
somewhere ahead a song rises;
a Polish song of course,
light-hearted and carefree.
And our dread of the guards fades.
Our sorrows melt away.
At Katowice Station,
the air echoed with a bugle call
from St. Mary's Tower,
and Polish songs played
by the Auschwitz Orchestra,
which was allowed to bring
their instruments.
Placed in a single train car,
they played a farewell.
(SPEAKS POLISH)
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
I'm trying to find out
who wrote the unfinished
musical sketch "Daremne Zale."
When I found it
in the Auschwitz archives,
it was tucked into
the first part of a 19th century
Polish operetta that had been
copied out by hand.
(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
Just over there, straight.
I eventually tracked down
the other half of the operetta
in the Polish National Library,
and more importantly,
the name of the copyist,
Mieczyslaw Krzynski.
We know from
Krzynski's prisoner number
that he arrived in Auschwitz
on the 17th of April 1942.
Krzynski was the deputy conductor
of the Auschwitz 1 Orchestra,
so not only was he
making arrangements,
but he was also copying the various
parts for all the players.
(SPEAKS POLISH)
My hunch is that Krzynski
wrote Daremne Zale,
but to know for sure,
I need to compare the writing
on the two manuscripts.
So, this is the...
the name of the operetta itself.
All we need now is the signature.
And here it is.
1935, so that's the date
this was written,
before the war,
but most importantly,
most interestingly, the signature:
"M. K."
And that stands for
Mieczyslaw Krzynski.
So, one of the ways we can tell
who the author is from a manuscript
is the treble clef.
And every composer writes
their treble clef differently.
So, if we compare these
to our unsigned and unfinished
composition sketch...
there's a very striking similarity
between the two.
So, we can see that it has the same
swivel shape here,
and also the top
of the treble clef here
doesn't have the circle
that we would expect to see.
The other aspect to look at is
the notes themselves.
So, in many cases, such as here,
we can see that
our composer has written
the notehead first,
and then somewhat
hurriedly afterwards
has drawn the stem
and then the bean.
And again this matches exactly
with that of the composition sketch
in the archive.
The similarity is just so striking
that it tells us that this
really must be by the same hand.
My brother, Mieczyslaw Krzynski,
was a professor of music
and a composer
who wrote and composed
the missing pieces
for the various instruments
that were not available.
He played a tuba
in the brass and the violin
in the string orchestra.
I think the reason why
Mieczyslaw Krzynski
didn't finish his piece
was because he couldn't perform it.
It is a piece that is
deeply sorrowful,
and I can't imagine any context
in which that
would have been allowed.
That piece was written
for himself, I think,
and finally,
we are giving voice to him.
And I can only hope that...
he's pleased with what I've done.
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BEGINS SOFTLY)
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONCLUDES)
PERL: Afterwards...
I think we were scared.
Scared to face reality.
I think, my whole life,
all I wanted to do
is go through life
without getting any punishment.
I'd try not to look at people,
I'd try not to ask questions.
All of us had problems...
and life had a different meaning.
Entirely different meaning.
When I go round
and talk about my experiences,
it's painful,
but I feel as though...
that humanity has got to learn,
and if humanity doesn't learn,
it will happen again
and again and again.
It might come
in a different overcoat,
but one has to be very careful.
(BIRDSONG)
HORNICK: So, I find great...
comfort when I come out here.
Whatever I have on my mind,
I come out into the garden.
It's just lovely.
It is very, very important
that, uh, people should hear
and, um, that is the reason at 95
I am still willing
to go and talk to young people,
because they all tell me
it's different
to hear our, uh,
testimonies of survivors.
I just feel very lucky to have
come out alive, out of there,
and reasonably sane, I think.
(LAUGHS)
(CLOCK TICKING)
They took me
and a few others
who so managed to survive...
to Sweden...
for our recovery.
And that was...
magic.
And every night
we listened to music,
and I interpreted that music...
for my life.
How the tragedy
destroyed everyone
in my family;
more than 50 members I lost.
And every night...
that was our spiritual recovery.
That there is...
perhaps beauty in the world.
Perhaps.