Music is Life

Holocaust story, family story

 Life is Music

    After a music lesson, my pupil, Rachel was packing up her bow and stopped to look at me. She asked, why is it you always end the session with, "practice hard, music is life?"
    My cliches were mostly ignored or thought of as an old man rambling, but this particular young woman, a violin player like myself was curious. Rachel was not only an excellent violinist, she was First chair at her high school,  played solos and also did private musical events. An excellent honors student who practiced long hours and had the attitude of a serious musician, she could name a composer when just a few notes were played. There was a quiet maturity to her, more than kids her age always on phones or playing those games. I was quite proud of her - OH, did I mention she is my only great-grandchild!
    Rachel's serious hazel eyes looked into mine, in that face I saw so many familiar splices of family traits, her mother's nose, my sister's cheeks, my grandmother's lips and of course, her love of the instrument like me. She asked, "Papa, I know that for me music is important, but why say this after every lesson?"
    I looked at her and smiled, patting her shoulder I realized maybe I owed her the deep explanation she sought. It was time she realized how serious music and life had meant to her Papa. I cleared my throat and told her to sit down. She removed her shoes and snuggled into the corner of the couch hugging her bluejeaned knees.
    "Rachel, I think you'll appreciate my words and how important they are to me because without them, I would not be sitting her now and neither would you. It was all a part of my Holocaust survival and I have not spoken about it because as many survivors, that past history we don't like to re-live."
     "In 1939, Nazis came to our town in Lodz as they were taking over Poland, we were forced out of the apartment, my father tried to come to our defense shielding us behind him and the SS Captain shot him in front of us for resisting. My grieving Mother, baby sister Joanna and older brother Louis made our way down with many others to the streets to be loaded onto the cattlecar for Aushwitz. My dear child, those were the days when evil was just a weary sojourner amongst us. The Idiosyncrasy of fear and survival was the pulse beat of life in those moments." 
     "After exiting that rancid boxcar on a gray day, besides all the yelling, confusion and mayhem, music was being played in the background, it was Richard Wagner's Tannauser, I can never forget. We were ordered to line up as the Nazis and their big guns and dogs straining at their leashes all seemed too close. They called over the 'sondercommandos' or "kapo" as we learned to call them, who were Jews the Nazis put in charge of pushing around other Jews. Most were horrible thugs and sadists, a few were helpful, but that was rare. Back then I thought they were cruel traitors to their own people, but today I can understand this,  it was what they had to do to survive the camps. I was just 2 years older than you, it was all too much for a teenager to absorb.
     "People were being separated, my mother and Joanna went to the left, they asked our ages, Louis had a limp from an injury on his job, he was forced to join my Mother and sister, I was hoping I would go with them, but they sent me to the right. It was the last I ever saw of them. I was terrified, but angry enough to want to live and get even."
     Rachels eyes teared up as she hugged herself even harder.
    "I was young and naive, they sent me to a factory to shovel coal and other little jobs. Everyday I was filthy, hungry, tired, we all were. You became hardened and learned what it takes to live in that demented reality. Trusting anyone could cost you your life. I saw such horrors: if you showed up to roll call with no hat or shoes, you were shot. I learned to sleep with one eye open, shoes laced tight on my feet, hat shoved down my pants. The weak were at mercy of the dominant, there was no shame among the desperate. I lowered myself to live as a sewer rat, the psyche becomes demoralized, mechanical after only a few weeks, you become primal and desensitized to the violence around you. I stole food when I could, I fought to sleep on a top bunk so body fluids did not leak on me. You never offended the kapos or they could have you killed. Hate and violence were motives for survival."
   I must tell you that it was my own grandfather I have to thank for making life a bit easier in the camp. He had seen to it that I had taken violin lessons for years. As a child I would sit near him as he played, he taught me and the more I played, the better I got, the more I played, I made Grandfather and my family proud. I could play a few string instruments well, the piano too and because of that I survived the last years at Auschwitz. Why does that matter? Because with all that annilhilation and devastation in the camp, they had the orchestra a big one. Hitler it seems had a soft spot for classical music, using it to soothe the masses before ethnic cleansing, used for personal satisfaction. Music made my life much better after a celloist became sick and died. The Commander came in the bunk room and asked if anyone played the cello, my hand was the only one to go up. No more filthy coal, we were clean and had better rations, and lots of practice. The orchestra had over 100 musicians, some singers too, there were Jews, Christians, homosexuals, and heathens. they spared the musically inclined from incineration who could prove their worth as a musician. Our instruments were pretty good and well taken care of, I was moved to Block 24, after playing we spent a considerable time cleaning, tuning and polishing besides doing other work in the camp. I made a few friends. We tried to stick together as some of the prisoners resented our status, even fights broke out, but I tried to avoid confrontation to spare my hands and my life."
     "Each morning we assembled with our stands and tools ready to welcome the trains. We played on for the workers going to the factories for construction and mining, we played as the cremetory bellowed, we played as medical experiments happened in the lab, we played on as the latrine workers and dead bodies were wheelbarrowed around us -- it was music to beautify the whole ugly process. And you played no matter how bad or sick you felt, your stomach growling, burning up with fever or diarrhea, there were never complaints, if we knew someone was really sick, we covered up by just playing a bit louder. You did not want to be sick enough to go to Block10, the medical building, you might not come back. Our job was to be on call, we never knew if an officer wanted late night entertainment, or some big commander or Hitler himself was coming. As musicians we earned a special status in our small oasis surrounded by snarling wolves."
   "Our ensemble played beneath a gazebo,  playing through heat that almost made you faint and relentless cold and rain that chilled your bones till it felt like the cold was gnawing at your insides. Some days the wind blew the crematory stench of burning bodies with its' ashes that got into your nostrils and throat and seemed to work into your lungs like ingesting ghosts. Still many times we were drowned out by the screaming din of separations and gunshots. I can tell you Rachel, I was running on blind faith - I lost my religion, to me no God would ever do this, theism was for dreamers, we had no freewill, we were slaves to the will of the nazis, there's no freewill as you are marched into a shower of Zykklon gas. Each day seemed a copy of the last, we saved all our emotions for our music. One day a boxcar emptied and an elderly man in a burgandy beret using a cane defied the Nazis and stood in front of us, enjoying what he heard, waving his cane as if he had maybe conducted an orchestra. His eyes closed, he seemed hypnotized which was better because one of the SS came from behind and hit the butt of his rifle against the back of the man's knees. As if in slow motion, the beret fell to the ground and he buckled, but shouted, "Bravo - Bravo - Merci" in French to us. He tried to get up, leaning on his cane when two dogs were set upon him, it was the only time we ever stopped playing. The dogs, the gunshots, we were reprimanded to start playing or else. We all had tears. I carried a burden of guilt with me for years that I had done nothing. But what I saw in him was my grandfather's appreciation for music, then my tears that day came from missing family and home and what was my purpose? would I ever get out? Was anyone in my family still alive?" It would take years before I knew they weren't."
    "Then it seemed suspicious, the crematories were going at full capacity, then shut down, the SS had burned down some warehouses, the SS were even killing the kapos,
the music had stopped, the gates were opened, many left, it was January so very frigid. People marched out only to succumb to exhaustion and starvation, we took to stripping clothes from the dead to stay warmer. I was sick with bronchitis, eveyrtime I coughed I thought my lungs would collapse, I could not march, the coughing was painful, most had left Block 24, but a few remained afraid to leave, they helped us as much as they could. There were a few nurses so kind as to check on our people. Then the 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front came, which was a strange time in that many prisoners had left camp on the Death march, the nazis for months had been burning and burying as many bodies and destroying as much evidence as they could, they were preoccupied. Remaining prisoners were stealing food from the kitchens, sharing with us who were so ill, they risked getting shot. I was sleepng in my bunk when someone looked through the window and yelled dogs were loose in the camp, someone thought it was bears. I looked out the window and it was the Russians in their big furry hats - I had to laugh and it hurt badly from the coughing. It was the first time I felt hope."
     "From the rescue it was weeks, we were carted off, treated by the Red cross and put onto trains, I went home, it was no longer home, no sign of friends or family, paperwork and more paperwork trying to find anyone. Generous people fed us. I finally made my way over to Britain staying with my wonderful Aunt Mildred and her family for a few years where I got my education then came to America to play and teach music at Universities. Rachel, it is why I am so happy to give back, to teach others, to have family close and watch my children and a great grand daughter grow and prosper. All because music saved me, Music is truly life!" 
     Rachel stood up, tears dotting her cheeks and hugged her grandfather. She turned and said, Papa, I am so sorry, I had only heard you were there, but never spoke of it. Thank you for sharing this, if music is life, then to me you will always be my inspiration and my music! 
      How could I respond - I hugged her then suggested she go play anything but Wagner for her old Papa.  

      OH, and did I mention how brilliant my great-granddaughter is!   

NEVER FORGET   -MORE INFO
please read more on the Orchestra of Auschwitz
https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/death-camps/auschwitz/camp-orchestras/

The Liberation:  From Officer Vasilii Davydov, 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front:
   "Wherever one looked, he saw piles of human bodies. In some places, the former prisoners, looking like human skeletons, sat or lay around, Many of them could be helped... a few told us what happened there. It is impossible to describe everything we saw there... They opened huge ditches filled with human corpses, bones, ashes, (the fascists sold these ashes as fertilizer for 5 marks a pound.) 
    more at:  https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/liberation-auschwitz   

Documentary: The Lost Music Of Auschwitz 
  https://theviolinchannel.com/new-documentary-the-lost-music-of-auschwitz-premieres/#:~:text=Titled%20The%20Lost%20Music%20of,of%20prisoners%20from%20the%20camp.