Music That Saves?

Birkenau, known as the death camp of Auschwitz, was one of the few camps where music accompanied mass murder. For 54 women who knew how to play instruments, music was a life saver.

The Women’s Orchestra of Birkenau was the only such orchestra commissioned by the SS during World War II. The women played for the crowds newly transported to Birkenau, for the bleary-eyed and emaciated inmates forced to work each day and for the pleasure of their captors. In exchange, they were granted life. Given slightly better treatment than other inmates of Birkenau, they paid for it with their hard practice and with the emotional stress of playing while other prisoners were sent to their graves. Using only the instruments on hand, they played Chopin and Beethoven with mandolins, recorders and flutes. With the exception of their conductor, Alma Rose, all 53 women survived. Three are still alive today.

Now, the sounds of the orchestra can be heard once again, in performances commemorating the women who played for a year and a half at Birkenau. It’s their story of hardship and humanity that compelled contemporary conductor Barbara Pickhardt to create “Music in Desperate Times: Remembering the Women’s Orchestra of Birkenau,” which weaves orchestral music taken from the repertoire of the ensemble with spoken words from the memoirs of orchestra members and with songs of hope and resistance sung by an accompanying chorus.

The concert will be performed March 28 by Ars Choralis, a not-for-profit chorus from upstate New York. The group will perform in a church in Berlin and at the liberation ceremony at Ravensbruck, an all-female concentration camp, later in the year. The spring series, however, begins in New York City, at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. It’s a venue that many say suits the program perfectly. “The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine has got an amazing history of social justice, a commitment that goes beyond any particular religious belief,” program director Alice Radosh said. “It is also one of the most, maybe the most, beautiful venues in New York City.”

http://www.forward.com/articles/104183/