Sound and Memory: Music in the Holocaust: Recent Episodes
Ian Biddle
Hosted by Ian Biddle, Senior Lecturer in Music at Newcastle University, this series of podcasts covers a range of topics on sound, music and the Holocaust. Throughout the podcast series, we will be asking some questions about how music was made by victims of the Holocaust, why they continued to make music under such appalling conditions, and why a refusal to give up the status of “cultural beings” was so pronounced among the victims. Topics covered include: the nature of testimony; song as testimony; music in the ghettos; music in the camps; music as remembrance.
What languages were spoken in the ghettoes and camps, in what David Rousset referred to in 1946 as the “concentrationary universe” [L’Univers concentrationnaire] ? In the camps in the west you are more likely to have heard French, German, Dutch, and sometimes Spanish or Italian among the inmates. In the east, where the vast majority of killing camps were located, one heard local languages mix with languages from all over Europe: Hungarian, Romanian, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian and, of course, Yiddish. In fact Yiddish was the first or near first language of the largest group of Jewish victims, and, therefore, the largest single language community of all.
In this week's podcast, we explore the nature of evidence, and especially testimony. We ask what kinds of evidence we can access when trying to understand how the Holocaust unfolded. Why, for example, is the study of a genocide like the Holocaust beset by controversy? Why do some want to deny it ever happened? In the face of such abhorrent beliefs, understanding that there is an overwhelming evidence base in support of the fact of the Holocaust is crucial. Beyond this, this episode explores how testimony came to be one of Holocaust Studies' favoured modalities for exploring the lives of the victims. When did testimony emerge as the dominant mode for thinking the Holocaust and why? Finally, we explore the extent to which Holocaust songs can be thought of as a kind of testimonial material.
In today’s podcast, we ask, “What does the Holocaust teach us about music?”
I will answer this question in three different ways.
- First I will answer this negatively, focussing on how the Holocaust teaches us what music is not
- Second I will answer this positively, focussing on how the Holocaust brings new insight into the meanings of music and its interrelationships with power
- Finally, I will problematise the oft-cited notion that music served for the victims of the Holocaust as a kind of “spiritual resistance”.