I’ll Take You in the Orchestra Right Now. Music and Spaces of Resistance in Nazi Concentration Camps
Résumé
Numerous accounts written after the war by survivors mention the presence of music in concentration camps, mainly to accompany the marching of the Kommandos in the morning and in the evening. Many of them also mention the strength of music, which, thanks to its soothing power, was said to have helped people get through the worst hours in the camps. While no official document from the Third Reich has been found regarding the creation of orchestras in the concentration camps, inmate music ensembles of various sizes were nevertheless constituted in a vast majority, on the orders of commanding officers. The function of a Lagerkapelle or “camp orchestra” was first and foremost to synchronize the steps of the prisoners Kommandos (work units), in order to facilitate their counting as they marched from the Appellplatz (roll call square) to the camp gate in the morning and in the evening. The Lagerkapelle could also be requisitioned to entertain the SS, or to accompany punishments and executions. Music thus mainly served the Nazi system of moral and physical destruction. However, from the very first days of captivity in the camps, music, particularly collective singing, established spaces for communication and moral or artistic resistance for certain inmates. This contribution shows how musical initiatives can be linked to a form of “resistance” in specific places and spaces of the camps: as a means to transgressively stand up against the Nazi camps system, as a life-affirming survival mechanism, but also as a vehicle of moral and cultural sustenance.
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