Author: Sarah Laskow / Source: Atlas Obscura
At Auschwitz, when prisoners went to work, a band played. The rhythm of the music was meant to encourage a rhythm to their labor. The musicians were prisoners themselves, and along with physical labor, they had other musical duties.
They would play, sometimes, during executions or during inspections. And on Sundays the band would play for the pleasure of the SS, in front of the house of the camp commandant, Rudolf Höss.These songs were often light fare—in 1943, for instance, the band played a popular fox trot, named, incredibly, “The Most Beautiful Time of Life.” Last summer, Patricia Hall, a professor of music theory at the University of Michigan, found the arrangement in the archive at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. And this week, an ensemble at the university will perform the piece, reviving the haunting and chilling sound of one of the…
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