Music created in Auschwitz will be performed in London. It will sound for the first time in 80 years

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Composer and conductor Leo Geyer restored a collection of musical manuscripts accidentally found in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Next week, fragments of these musical works will be played for the first time in 80 years.

According to CNN, in 2015, 31-year-old Leo Geyer, who is pursuing a doctorate in music and composition at Oxford University, was commissioned to write a musical score in memory of British historian and Holocaust expert Martin Gilbert.

To feel the full importance of Gilbert’s work, Geyer went to Poland and visited a former Nazi concentration camp. While there, he met with the archivist of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, who spoke about the remains of musical scores arranged and played by orchestras in the camp.

“I knew there were orchestras in Auschwitz. We talked about it because I was interested in it as a musician. And then he mentioned the manuscripts that are in the archives. I couldn’t believe that something like this had gone almost unnoticed for almost 80 years.” , Geyer said.

Photo by Leo Geyer

According to him, the archive contains “210 musical works of various levels of completion.” A month later, the composer returned to Poland to look at the manuscripts.

“That’s when I realized why it took so long for people to get interested in them. The music was mostly destroyed. What’s left is like a broken puzzle: there are several compositions and they’re all mixed up.” – he explained.

Geyer returned to Auschwitz four more times. He says he is determined to recreate the works and bring them to life.

Many of the fragments that Geyer discovered are incomplete, and some of them are burned around the edges. His job is to put the matching pieces together and rearrange the missing pieces.

“It’s surprisingly difficult to do. It’s like trying to compose a novel, word for word, but in music it’s much more difficult.” – says the composer.

Four restored compositions will be performed by Constella Music – Geyer’s creative team. “Orchestras of Auschwitz” will perform as part of the concert on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Constella Music.

The concert will be played as it could have sounded at that time – with accordions and saxophones and without woodwind instruments.

How did orchestras function in the camps?

Photo of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial

In order to recreate the pieces of music found in the concentration camp, Geyer conducted extensive research into the evidence from Auschwitz and the history of music in the camps. According to the composer, most concentration camps had orchestras made up of prisoners who played whatever instruments were available.

“At one time there were as many as six orchestras in Auschwitz, all of them sanctioned by the SS, and in some cases commissioned by the SS. They were mostly small and had many different instruments.” – he said.

Accordions and saxophones, which were not found in traditional orchestras, were especially common in camp groups. But oboes and bassoons were completely absent.

“The women’s orchestra of Birkenau was without a cellist for years, until they managed to find one”, – told Geyer.

Anita Lasker-Walfisch became this cellist. The woman survived the Holocaust and still lives in Great Britain.

Anita Lasker-Walfisch and Leo Geyer

“The fact that I became a member of the camp orchestra definitely helped me survive almost a year in Auschwitz. As long as the Germans wanted an orchestra, it was counterproductive to kill us.” – said the woman of the Holocaust Memorial Fund.

According to her, the band played a march every morning and every evening at the gate of the camp so that the working commandos would step clearly in step.

“We also had to be available at all times to play for individual SS officers who, after sending thousands to their deaths, came to our block and wanted to hear music.” – recalls the cellist.

There were also times when music was used for uplifting.

“Many musicians began to rebel by using musical cryptograms: they hid messages in the music, for example, weaving the national anthem of Poland into the melody of the march,” – told Geyer.

Read also: Instagram of the day: Chronicles of the Holocaust in “stories” from a 13-year-old girl

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