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  After Jacques and his brother were marched into Birkenau, they were briefly reunited with a doctor they had known in Thessalonica. The doctor, who had arrived just a few days earlier, pulled Jacques aside to tell him the truth about what happened to those who were selected to go to the right. “By now, your wife, your parents, and her parents have already been gassed, and soon they will be burned in the ovens of the crematorium,” he whispered. “The young people brought to the camp have a chance, a small chance to survive, but only provided that they never become ill.”37 Getting sick would result in no longer being useful. Being useless would result in being sent to the gas chambers.

  The first stop in Birkenau was the “sauna,” where the detainees were tattooed with their prisoner numbers. Jacques was given number 121097. The hair on their heads and bodies was shaved off. They were sent to a shower that fluctuated in temperature between freezing cold and boiling hot. Then they were given blue-and-white-striped prison uniforms with yellow and red Stars of David over their left breasts to mark them as being Jewish.

  The shape and color of a detainee’s badge indicated why that person was imprisoned and defined one’s place in the Auschwitz hierarchy. Jews who wore Stars of David were at the bottom of the ladder, alongside the Roma, who wore brown triangles. Above them were the Poles and Russians, who wore red triangles as political prisoners. At the very top were German criminals, who wore green triangles. The higher a detainee was on the social scale, the more likely it was that he would be chosen for functionary positions within the camp administrative system. These positions included block elders who oversaw the prisoner barracks and capos who oversaw work details. In return for maintaining order by inflicting terror on their fellow detainees, the functionaries received better food and better living conditions, and therefore better chances of survival.

  Jacques and the surviving members of his transport had just entered their new barracks and received their bunk assignments when their block elder ordered them to assemble at the doorway.

  “Are there any prisoners here who play a musical instrument?” the menacing figure asked.

  Jacques was stunned by the question. It seemed impossible to even think about playing an instrument in a place like this. Nobody spoke, but everyone looked at Jacques. They were all from Thessalonica and they all knew of his abilities.

  “I play the violin, but that is not my profession,” Jacques finally responded in German. “When I was admitted to the camp I indicated that I am an electrical engineer!”

  “The fact that you did not reply to my question immediately, even though you are in fact a violinist, is the purest sabotage, and you could have gotten twenty-five lashes on your butt!” the block elder barked. “But because you say that you are an amateur, five lashes will be enough! First, though, I would like to hear you play!”

  “My instrument was taken away from me as we climbed out of the wagon this morning!”

  “That doesn’t matter. I will find a violin for you at once.”

  Within minutes, Jacques had a violin and a bow in his hand. He tuned the instrument and began to play, performing for twenty minutes without interruption. His fellow prisoners listened blissfully as they were transported back to Thessalonica, back to freedom.

  “You play very well!” praised the block elder, motioning for Jacques to stop playing. “And I know what I am talking about, for I am a pianist. Besides that, you are an engineer and speak good German!”

  “I hope that you will not die on us here!” the block elder cruelly joked, placing his hand on Jacques’s shoulder. “We will skip the punishment, for you will be brought right away to the audition in the conservatory.”38

  Jacques was taken to the “conservatory,” a barracks that had been set aside for musicians in the camp. During an interview there, he revealed that he had studied the violin for six years in Thessalonica, then one year at the Lycée Musical in Marseilles, three years in Paris, and a year at the Bordeaux Conservatory. These credentials were so impressive that an audition was deemed unnecessary. Jacques was immediately invited to become the concertmaster of the camp orchestra.

  Auschwitz Main Camp Orchestra

  In addition to secret ensembles such as the one Herbert Zipper formed in Dachau in 1938, official orchestras had been performing in German concentration camps since 1933. Auschwitz was home to a number of ensembles, including a large orchestra in the Auschwitz Main Camp, orchestras in the men’s and women’s camps of Birkenau, and several other ensembles throughout the Auschwitz complex. These orchestras were composed of musicians who were recruited from the prisoner population.

  The first orchestra was a small clandestine ensemble that initially played together in the Auschwitz Main Camp on January 6, 1941. It was composed of a handful of prisoners who had been allowed to have their instruments sent from home. After professional band leader Franciszek Nierychło received approval from the camp administration to form an official ensemble, the orchestra began to grow through the addition of current prisoners as well as new arrivals. For musicians like trombonist Tadeusz Jawor, having one’s own instrument was a condition of being allowed to join the orchestra. Other instruments were confiscated by SS officials from the areas surrounding Auschwitz.

  All detainees who were identified as musicians and who passed an audition were assigned to the gate orchestra. By May 1942, that ensemble included more than one hundred musicians. Most of the performers were Polish prisoners, but some were Czech or Russian. Jews were not admitted. Several of the musicians were former members of military bands and professional orchestras, while others were accomplished amateurs. The orchestra’s main responsibility was to play marches at the camp gate, to provide a cheerful façade and rhythmic orderliness as the work details marched out of camp and returned every day. The ensemble also performed during executions, roll calls, and official visits by luminaries ranging from SS commander Heinrich Himmler to a delegation of the Red Cross.

  The gate orchestra’s repertoire consisted primarily of German marches such as the popular military march “Old Comrades.” On special occasions the ensemble would play fanfares and popular compositions such as Light Cavalry Overture. As an apparently unnoticed form of defiance, the musicians would sometimes perform marches by American composer John Philip Sousa to celebrate rumors of Allied victories. Since the orchestra did not own any sheet music at first, the musicians would collect slips of paper from the administration office, draw lines for music staves, and add the musical notation. Some wrote down tunes they remembered, while others notated the harmony. Later, the members of the orchestra gave bread to a descendant of a famous Polish bookseller, who in return gave them access to his personal bank account to purchase an entire library of music.

  The top eighty musicians from the gate orchestra also played in a symphony orchestra that gave concerts on Sunday afternoons and holidays for the SS officers and guards, as well as for their fellow prisoners. In addition to dance tunes and selections from popular operas and operettas, the symphony orchestra performed classical masterworks such as Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Beethoven’s piano concertos. For camp commandant Rudolf Höss, the performances provided regular opportunities to present himself to his visitors and family members as a cultured patron of the arts. For Höss’s SS subordinates, the concerts lent a sense of normalcy, decency, and even nobility to working in the camp. For the members of the orchestra, the events offered opportunities to earn food and cigarettes from their captors. And for the detainees who attended the symphony orchestra’s performances, the music provided a mental escape from the harsh realities of life in Auschwitz. “The Germans put barbed wire all around the camp so that no one will escape, but I just close my eyes and I’m on the other side of the wires,” one of the prisoners would say. “They have no idea that we’re all fugitives.”39

  In addition to the official gate orchestra and symphony orchestra, impromptu ensembles often performed at private parties. Some musicians even played at an SS wedding outsi
de of the camp. Although jazz and swing music had been forbidden by the Third Reich because of their “degenerate” African-American and Jewish influences, a jazz combo led by Dutch trumpeter Lex van Weren was one of the most popular ensembles in Auschwitz.

  As a reward for their contributions to camp life, the orchestral musicians sometimes received preferential treatment. This included special uniforms and lighter work details such as copying music and repairing musical instruments. Many of the performers were assigned to work in the kitchen, giving them access to extra food while also allowing them to work inside.

  But membership in the orchestra did not by any means spare the musicians from reassignment, deportation, or death. One violinist was selected for execution during a rehearsal. He was allowed to finish the piece before being taken away and killed. The turnover in personnel was so great that a total of eight hundred musicians performed during the orchestra’s four-year existence, even though the ensemble never included more than 120 musicians at any given time.

  On October 27, 1944, the Polish musicians were transferred to concentration camps in Germany, along with most of the other Polish prisoners in Auschwitz. The only Polish member of the orchestra who stayed behind was Adam Kopyciński, who had taken over the orchestra after Nierychło had volunteered for the German army. The symphony orchestra was disbanded and Kopyciński had to put together a new gate orchestra. To replace the Poles who had constituted the majority of the previous ensemble, Jews were allowed to participate in the Auschwitz Main Camp Orchestra for the first time. They quickly replaced Poles in the majority. By late November, all but ten of the seventy-seven musicians in the orchestra were Jewish.

  The Auschwitz Main Camp Orchestra was dissolved when Auschwitz was evacuated on January 18, 1945. By that time, it had become a model for orchestras in other camps, including the ensembles elsewhere in the Auschwitz complex.

  Birkenau Men’s Camp Orchestra

  In August 1942, Johann Schwarzhuber, the camp commander of Birkenau, decided to form his own ensemble. Unlike the Auschwitz Main Camp Orchestra, the Birkenau Men’s Camp Orchestra included Jews from its very beginning.

  One of the most influential Jewish musicians was the Polish violinist and composer Szymon Laks, who had been arrested in Paris in 1941. In the summer of 1942, Szymon was deported to Auschwitz, where he was assigned prisoner number 49543. At first, he had been assigned to a grueling work detail. After twenty days of growing increasingly emaciated and depressed, fortune had smiled on him. Like Jacques Stroumsa, Szymon was saved by his block elder.

  “Is there someone here who speaks Polish and plays bridge?” asked the Polish block elder one evening. He and two other block elders needed a fourth for their nightly game. Since the prisoners in that barracks had all been transported from France, Szymon was the only one who qualified.

  While playing bridge with the three block elders, Szymon happened to mention that he was a violinist and a composer.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” his block elder asked. “Tomorrow you’ll stay in the barracks and I’ll take you over to the orchestra.”

  “And if you’re accepted, maybe you’ll live a little longer,” one of the other block elders added, laughing.40

  At dawn the next morning, Szymon’s block elder took him to the music barracks, where conductor Jan Zaborski handed Szymon a violin and asked him to play. Szymon’s fingers were stiff and bruised from three weeks of labor duty. His arms were so sore he could barely hold the bow. But he somehow found the strength to launch into Mendelssohn’s difficult violin concerto—forgetting that the Jewish composer had been banned by the Nazis.

  Zaborski stopped him after just a few measures. “Good. Technique not bad, not bad,” the conductor said. “Tell your barracks chief that you have been accepted and for him to transfer you to this barracks. Also tell him to take you to the clothing storeroom, where they’ll exchange those rags you’re wearing for decent stripes.”41 And so Szymon was accepted into the orchestra.

  Like Szymon, Henry Meyer did not join the orchestra immediately upon arriving in Auschwitz. Instead, he and his brother were put to work in Auschwitz III, building a factory for the Buna chemical plant. Henry’s job was to sit atop scaffolding high in the freezing air and hold a hammer for a riveter. It was extremely dangerous work that few survived for very long.

  Henry’s brother died within a month of arriving at Auschwitz III. He developed a severe case of diarrhea one morning and was unable to go out to work. By the time Henry returned that evening, his brother had simply disappeared. Henry never knew whether his brother died of a disease or was selected for the gas chambers because he was no longer fit for work.

  Shortly after his brother’s death, Henry himself fell ill. He was taken to the infirmary, where he was scheduled for a selection the very next day. His musical background ended up saving his life when a Jewish doctor paid him a visit.

  “What did you do before?” the doctor asked.

  “I have not done very much, since I am very young,” Henry replied. “But I was a child prodigy on the violin and played in several cities.”

  “And where are you from?” Henry asked the doctor.

  “Breslau.”

  “Ah, Breslau, I know it. I performed there. I played with the culture league orchestra.”

  “The Tartini Concerto?” the doctor asked, referring to a fiendishly difficult work for solo violin and orchestra by Giuseppe Tartini.

  “Yes.”

  “I was at that concert,” the doctor marveled. The performance had left such an impression on the doctor that he had recalled every moment of it.

  “I’ll be right back,” the doctor promised Henry. He returned a few minutes later with a corpse slung over his shoulder. He plopped the body next to Henry on the bed. Then he picked up Henry and carried him to the dead man’s former bed. “Everything has to be in order,” he explained, exchanging Henry’s file card and prisoner number for the corpse’s.42

  The doctor gave Henry extra medication and nursed him back to health. He then arranged for Henry to be assigned an undemanding job cleaning and making beds for SS doctors in the Auschwitz Main Camp, including Josef Mengele, the infamous “Angel of Death.”

  Henry’s privileged job came to an abrupt end one day. “You! Number 104944!” an SS guard shouted at him. “Report for instructions!”43 Henry had been transferred to Birkenau, where he would join the orchestra.

  As with the Auschwitz Main Camp Orchestra, the main task of the Birkenau Men’s Camp Orchestra was to perform for the parades of work details leaving camp every morning and returning every night. At dawn, the musicians would line up outside the music barracks in rows of five, just like every other work detachment. The trumpets would stand in the first row, followed by the horns, accordions, clarinets, and the saxophone. Bringing up the rear would be the tuba, the snare drum, the bass drum, and the cymbals. At the front of the ensemble, proudly holding his baton, would be Franz Kopka, a drummer who in addition to being the capo of the orchestra managed to have himself named its conductor after Jan Zaborski died in November 1942.

  “Forward, march!” Kopka would shout,44 followed by the title of the march the band was to play. The snare drum would establish the tempo with a brief cadence, accompanied by the boom of the bass drum and the crash of the cymbals. The band would join in as the ensemble marched toward the stage that had been erected next to the camp gate. On their way, they would pass the capos who were busily lining up their detachments for an orderly march out of the camp.

  When the band reached the stage, Kopka would cut off the music and bring the formation to a halt. The musicians would scamper to their places on the stage, spread out the music on their stands, and await their next command. Instead of launching immediately into another march, Kopka would often indulge himself by calling for a tango. This would allow him to emulate what he thought a great conductor should look like, waving the first two fingers of each hand in the air while contorting his entire body in rid
iculous gestures. The musicians would simply play on, ignoring the antics of their pretentious conductor. Sometimes, the SS guards would interrupt Kopka’s selection to make a request of their own, with which Kopka would readily comply.

  “Come on! Music!” the guards would shout once the detachments were in formation and once their requests had been performed.45 Both sides of the gate would swing open while the orchestra performed “Old Comrades.” The detachments would march out of the camp for their work details while a functionary counted each row of five to make sure every prisoner was accounted for. The process of marching all the detainees out of the camp could last two or more hours, during which time the orchestra would play without interruption.

  After the last detachments had passed through the gate, the orchestra would reassemble in its parade formation and march back to the music barracks. The performers would stow away their instruments and begin their daily work. Privileged musicians like Szymon Laks would remain behind every day to arrange and copy out music for the orchestra to perform. Everyone else would line up again and march out of the gate. Although they were not exempt from forced labor, they did have the advantage of working slightly less, since they were the last ones to leave camp every morning. They were also the first to return in the evening, at which time they would perform marches for the exhausted workers hobbling back into the camp.

  While the woodwind, brass, and percussion players would form a marching band during the procession to and from the stage, the violinists would follow behind them with their instruments still in their cases. It did not take long for the SS guards to notice that Henry Meyer and the other violinists did not have anything to do during those parades. “Why don’t you play?” they would ask. “What are you needed for?”46

  Knowing that being seen as “useless” would result in a transfer to a more difficult work command or in a trip to the gas chambers, Henry decided to give himself a task. When the cymbal player fell ill and disappeared, Henry convinced Kopka that he was a virtuoso cymbalist, even though he had never held a pair of cymbals before in his life. The first time he crashed the cymbals, he slammed them together with such force that he almost broke his wrists. Nevertheless, he quickly mastered the proper technique and became the marching band’s permanent cymbal player. From that point on, instead of being an object of derision for the SS guards, Henry was a source of entertainment. The guards made a game out of throwing pebbles in Henry’s direction. He would deflect the pebbles with his cymbals, often to the beat of the music.