Lost music from Auschwitz performed after 80 years
The music Geyer documented was played for the first time in 80 years at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre on June 3-7, 2025.
THE WORDS ‘arbeit macht frei’ hang above the gate at Auschwitz.(photo credit: Victoria Jones/Reuters)ByGIL ZOHAR
In 2015, London-based musician and composer Leo Geyer was commissioned to write a tribute honoring British historian Sir Martin Gilbert, who had recently died.
Visiting Oświęcim, Poland, to better understand the Holocaust historian’s research, a conversation with a curator at the Auschwitz Birkenau Memorial Museum led him to a trove of forgotten musical scores composed by prisoners who had been forced to perform in the SS-run orchestras in the notorious Nazi concentration camp where more than 1.1 million died in gas chambers, mass executions, torture, medical experiments, exhaustion, starvation, disease, and random acts of violence.
Due to conservation issues, the Auschwitz Museum no longer permits filming movies at the fragile historic site. Using the advanced spatial scanning technology, the museum recently employed a team of specialists led by Maciej Żemojcin to create a digital replica of the Auschwitz I camp. The project was recognized at the Cannes Film Festival.
The deteriorating and fragile sheets of music written in pencil were faded and ripped. Many had burn damage. Intrigued, Geyer devoted nearly a decade of musical detective work to studying the documents and filling in the missing gaps. The music formed the basis for his doctorate from Oxford University.
Geyer's uncovered music from Auschwitz performed after 80 years
To commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945, the music Geyer documented was played for the first time in 80 years at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre on June 3-7, 2025. The profoundly moving opera ballet included Geyer’s initiative to complete the unfinished scores and choreography by New York-born choreographer Claudia Schreier.
Auschwitz (credit: REUTERS)
“The musicians took incredible risks to make brazen acts of rebellion. When good news of the war [of the Allies’ June 6, 1944, D-Day landings] reached the men’s orchestra in Auschwitz I, they performed marches not by German composers but by American composers,” Geyer said in an interview with France 24’s daily broadcast Perspective.
The tone-deaf guards couldn’t distinguish between a Strauss waltz and a John Philip Sousa march. “The musicians would also weave in melodies from Polish national identity such as St. Mary’s Trumpet Call (a five-note Polish bugle call closely bound to the history of Kraków). We also know of secret performances that would principally encompass Polish music, but we know that Jewish music was performed as well,” noted Geyer.
The story of the orchestras at Auschwitz was popularized by French pianist, composer, and cabaret singer Fania Fénelon (née Fanja Goldstein (1908–1983), whose 1976 memoir Sursis pour l’orchestre, about survival in the Women’s Orchestra at the Nazi concentration camp, was adapted as the 1980 television film Playing for Time.
The orchestra, active from April 1943 to October 1944, consisted mainly of young female Jewish and Slavic prisoners of varying nationalities. The Germans regarded their performances as helpful in the daily running of the camp, as they brought solace to those trapped in unimaginable horror. As well, the musicians held a concert every Sunday for the amusement of the SS.
Geyer said the SS organized at least six men’s and women’s orchestras at Auschwitz, perhaps as many as 12. They principally played marching music as the prisoners trudged to the munitions factories and other industrial sites, where they worked as slave laborers, he explained.
“Musicians had marginally better conditions than other prisoners,” he noted. “The majority of the musicians and composers did not survive the war.”
Most of their names are lost. Geyer was able to track down the composer of one unsigned composition by comparing the handwriting to a document found at a conservatory in Warsaw.
Adding poignancy to the recent June performances in London, the musicians played from copies from the original scores.
“We poured our heart and soul into these performances,” said Geyer. “I am neither Jewish nor Romani. But I am human.”
