Holocaust Music Unearthed

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke Mar 9, 2007

Music can be a powerful political tool (as the Nazi appropriation of Wagner proves), but music repression can be an even more powerful political tool. During the Third Reich in Germany, the Nazi government not only persecuted Jewish musicians, but censored music exhibiting "Jewish" characteristics.

Albrecht Duemling, a German musicologist, is on a quest to find and restore the music lost during the Holocaust persecution.

There is debate surrounding Duemling's project: should he focus on recovering works by musicians such as Hollywood film composer Eric Zeisl, who fled Nazi occupation and later became famous as an ex-pat? Or should his group try to bring lesser known concentration camp artists to the public eye. After all, the concentration camp inmates experienced the Holocaust much more vividly than those who managed to emigrate did. However, in the interests of raising funds, expanding the scope of the project to include the well-known emigrants appeals to a wider audience (and thus to a larger collective pocketbook).