The World Betrayed the Stories the Survivors
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SONGS FOR THE BETRAYED WORLD The songs on this album are principally about the THE LIFE & DEATH ORCHESTRA Holocaust, an event unparalleled in human history. Unparalleled, because although there have been many The World Betrayed evils and many genocides, never before had a modern 1 NEVER 4.00 state planned to kill every person of a particular 2 LOVE IN A COLD WORLD 5.22 group, turning race into a crime. 3 THIS WAY FOR THE GAS, The Holocaust signifies the death of millions of human beings, in the main Jews, who were killed in LADIES & GENTLEMEN 12.30 4 AUSCHWITZ 1987 barbaric ways by the Nazis and their collaborators 1.53 during Hitler’s evil regime which extended over 5 PIGTAIL 4.18 Europe between 1933 and 1945. 6 BE HAPPY 1.24 The Holocaust also signifies the experiences 7 JACOB’S JIG 1.15 of Jews and non-Jews who survived the horror, but whose lives were unalterably changed and who con- The Stories tinue to grieve through more than one generation. For many, it will take lifetimes for the horror and 8 FIVE MEN 5.01 grieving to abate. Testimonies by survivors display 9 KLARA’S ESCAPE 7.50 10 US TWO countless painful and conflicting emotions. 3.31 Sadly, the twentieth century has been the 11 HYMN TO A WOMAN UNDER most violent ever. For as well as the Holocaust, it has INTERROGATION 0.51 seen more barbarous acts than any medieval century. 12 DEATHFUGUE 3.49 In truth, the world has been betrayed. 13 VICTOR JARA OF CHILE 5.07 Perhaps it is only through the testimonies of 14 FOR RACHEL: individuals that we can truly appreciate that the mil- lions of people who have been killed in acts of geno- CHRISTMAS 1965 3.40 cide, represent unique individuals: brothers, sisters, The Survivors mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, friends and neigh- bours. In literature and poetry, we can come closer 15 THE SURVIVOR 2.11 to recognising the shared humanity of those who have 16 NIGHT perished, and those who survived. EXCERPT FROM NIGHT 0.59 A few years ago, I was given a book of poems 17 AGAIN 3.49 largely about the Holocaust. The book was The Poetry of 18 TOURISTS 1.40 Survival edited by Daniel Weissbort. Some of the poems so moved me that I set them to music. Pigtail, Five Men, 19 JOSEF & SARA’S WALTZ 1.26 Deathfugue and Us Two were the first poems I set. The 20 NEVER REPRISE 4.00 21 SLEEP poems led me to want to know more about the 2.32 Holocaust and so I researched and read and spoke to people about the Holocaust as much as I could. Out of that research came this work. This album contains some must we forget. Let there be no more camps.And we of the greatest writing ever,by some of the greatest writ- say it in our musical language. ers of the 20th Century,including Yehuda Amichai,Tadeusz Czeslaw Milosz described this impulse best in Borowski, Kevin Carey, Nina Cassian, Paul Celan, his great poem,“Campo Dei Fiori”, Zbigniew Herbert, Reiner Kunze, Micheline Maurel, Czeslaw Milosz,Adrian Mitchell,Tadeusz Rózewicz, Hilda Those dying here, the lonely Schiff, Elie Wiesel and Adam Zych. forgotten by the world, In the main I have set poems to music, our tongue becomes for them although there are two pieces based on prose. Be the language of an ancient planet. Happy is taken from Micheline Maurel’s book, Until, when all is legend and Ravensbrück, while This Way for the Gas, Ladies and many years have passed, Gentlemen, by Tadeusz Borowski, is adapted by Angi on a new Campo dei Fiori Mariani and myself. Early on, I met composer Mark rage will kindle at a poet’s word. Jolyon Sinclair, known to all as Bim, and he worked closely with me on the work. He brought a number - taken from the poem, “Campo Dei Fiori” (on the destruction of of his own compositions to the complete work, plus the Warsaw Ghetto) - Czeslaw Milosz,Warsaw, 1943 he arranged more or less everything, with some help from Herbie Flowers who arranged a lot of the ABOUT THE WRITERS rhythm sections. We were helped significantly by the This work contains writings by some of the greatest immense skill of the musicians who became The Life writers of the 20th Century. Tadeusz Borowski’s and Death Orchestra. Auschwitz stories are masterpieces of world litera- Many people believe any portrayal of the ture.Although a survivor of Auschwitz, Borowski died Holocaust is misguided. How can you express the by his own hand, by gas in 1951 in Warsaw. inexpressible? The German critic, Theodor Adorno Elie Wiesel, another survivor of both said, “After Auschwitz, poetry is barbaric”, but for Auschwitz and Buchenwald won the Nobel Prize in many others there is a greater imperative, the need to 1986 for his unforgettable work, Night, and one of the give voice to the feelings of anger and despair at the key passages is narrated here.Tadeusz Rózewicz is one unspeakable horror. of the most respected Eastern European poets and In making this album, we questioned our we have adapted two of his great poems,The Survivor intentions and our approach, and confronted many of and Pigtail. Micheline Maurel survived Ravensbrück the debates about art representing the Holocaust. concentration camp, and then wrote her book, Why have we used music? Why have we produced Ravensbrück, in which she wrote as a plea to the out- music that is intended to move or be uplifting? Why side world,“Be happy, millions of people envy you.” have we produced music that describes the graphic Two other great Eastern European poets are evil? Why have we related the Holocaust to other acts included, Zbigniew Herbert and Reiner Kunze, both of of genocide? What you will find is many messages in whose works were banned in their own countries. the words of the songs, many in the words of sur- Zbigniew Herbert’s first collection, A Chord of Light vivors. But simply, we say: Never shall we forget. Never could not be published in Poland until after Stalin’s death in 1956; and Reiner Kunze’s work was first Altbeker Cyprys and Gerda Weissmann Klein provide banned in East Germany in 1968 when he publicly a unique view of this darkest period of history.As can protested against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. be read from the excerpts included, their accounts are Herbert lived all over Europe and America, and Kunze memorable and heartbreaking testaments of courage. later resettled in West Germany. Czeslaw Milosz was awarded the Nobel Prize for In the haunting poem, Us Two, Nina Cassian Literature in 1980 and has written many poems on conveys the permanence and strength of love in just 5 the Holocaust which are included in his Collected lines. Paul Celan, has achieved worldwide renown with Poems. his six volumes of poetry published in his lifetime, and Many of the poems and excerpts used have three more since his death in 1970. Celan was Jewish been translated into English. We are indebted to the but his native language was German, and therefore translators of these works. The translators are language became a complex and involved part of his Barbara Vedder for This Way for the Gas, Ladies and work, as can be read in Deathfugue. In the poem, Gentlemen; Hilda Schiff for Auschwitz, 1987; Adam Auschwitz, 1987, Adam Zych describes the enduring Czerniawski for Pigtail and The Survivor; Margaret S horror of that place, in his depiction of a visit to Summers for Be Happy (excerpt from Ravensbrück); Auschwitz over 40 years after the mass murders. Czeslaw Milosz for Five Men; Ewald Osers for Hymn Auschwitz remains a terrifying and chilling place. To A Woman Under Interrogation; John Felstiner for For many years a schoolteacher, Yehuda Deathfugue; Glenda Abramson & Tudor Parfitt for Amichai teaches us all a salutary lesson about what is Tourists, and Margitt Lehbert for the profile of important, in his insightful poem, Tourists. Adrian Zbigniew Herbert. Mitchell is one of the UK’s most talented writers, writing in many different mediums, but most keenly, poetry.We include his poem,Victor Jara of Chile sim- ABOUT THE ARTISTS ply because it powerfully depicts the world betrayed, The picture on the front cover is a watercolour by Arnold Daghani, paint- a gentle and heroic man destroyed by cruelty. The ed whilst inside the Mikhailowka forced labour camp, 1 January 1943. It poem, Again, by the UK writer, Kevin Carey, echoes is dedicated to his wife Nanino wishing her a Happy New Year. many of the questions raised by the above writers and The picture on the back cover of the booklet is by Ralph widens the focus from the horrors of Dachau, to Freeman, entitled Rosina & Carlos IV (1940). other acts of genocide in the 20th century. The photograph on the middle pages of the booklet is by In this booklet, we include excerpts from the Donald Woodman and depicts the view of ramp at Birkenau where works of Primo Levi, Ruth Altbeker Cyprys, Eva selections took place. Fogelman, Gerda Weissmann Klein and Czeslaw Milosz.The Jewish-Italian writer, Primo Levi, wrote his ARNOLD DAGHANI famous prose work, If This is a Man,in 1958, about his Arnold Daghani came from a German-speaking Jewish experiences at Auschwitz,and this was one of the first family in Suczawa, Bukovina, now Suceava in Romania. books to be read by a worldwide readership. He died in 1985 in Hove, UK.