Songs Of The Damned
BBC Earth|September - October 2019

Aleksander Kulisiewicz survived five years in a Nazi concentration camp, where he committed the music and lyrics of his fellow inmates to memory. As Mark Burman recounts, it was an act of defiance that allows us to glimpse a manmade hell

Songs Of The Damned

Aleksander Kulisiewicz lay in a Polish infirmary seemingly babbling. The doctor assumed he was raving. Kulisiewicz thought he was dying. He had survived five years of incarceration in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and the subsequent death march ordered by the SS as the Soviets closed in, in April 1945. But the nurse attending Kulisiewicz realised he was urging her to transcribe what he was feverishly reciting. She began copying down what would become hundreds of pages of lyrics. Songs of the damned and the dead. Songs of utter darkness or wicked portraits of camp life. Songs of longing for home or loved ones. Among them 54 of his own compositions.

Recovered, Kulisiewicz would spend the rest of his life performing and collecting songs and stories of the survivors of the Nazi concentration camp system, which had imprisoned and murdered millions. It’s a body of work that represents the largest single source of music composed in the concentration camps. He died in 1982 before completing a 3,000-page musical survey that had increasingly absorbed his life to the detriment of his family and marriage.

There was precious little interest in all of this in his native Poland, which had been largely stripped of its Jewish population and was in thrall to manipulative communist narratives about the Holocaust. Kulisiewicz’s vast collection of tapes and papers began gathering dust – effectively in storage at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, until in 1993 it was brought to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Even now its contents are still being catalogued. A CD that emerged, Ballads and Broadsides, joins a collection of Kulisiewicz recordings that remain profoundly compelling musical documents.

Denne historien er fra September - October 2019-utgaven av BBC Earth.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

Denne historien er fra September - October 2019-utgaven av BBC Earth.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

FLERE HISTORIER FRA BBC EARTHSe alt
World's First Malaria Vaccine
BBC Earth

World's First Malaria Vaccine

The World Health Organization’s director-general hails ‘historic moment’ as mass immunisation of African children begins

time-read
2 mins  |
Volume 14 - Issue 2
Is River Pollution Putting The Species In Jeopardy Again?
BBC Earth

Is River Pollution Putting The Species In Jeopardy Again?

Ten years ago, it was jubilantly announced that o ers had returned to every county in England. But is river pollution putting the species in jeopardy again?

time-read
10+ mins  |
Volume 14 - Issue 2
The Big Burnout
BBC Earth

The Big Burnout

Long hours, low pay and a lack of appreciation — among other things — can make for a stressful workplace and lead to burnout. It’s something we should all be concerned about, because over half of the workforce reports feeling it

time-read
10 mins  |
Volume 14 - Issue 2
Putting Nature To Rights
BBC Earth

Putting Nature To Rights

More countries are enshrining the right to a clean environment into law. So if a company or government is impinging upon that right, you could take them to court

time-read
10 mins  |
Volume 14 - Issue 2
Mega Spaceship: Is It Possible For China To Build A Kilometre-Long Spacecraft?
BBC Earth

Mega Spaceship: Is It Possible For China To Build A Kilometre-Long Spacecraft?

Buoyed on by its successful Moon missions, China has launched a five-year study to investigate the possibility of building the biggest-ever spacecraft

time-read
4 mins  |
Volume 14 - Issue 2
Are We Getting Happier?
BBC Earth

Are We Getting Happier?

Enjoying more good days than bad? Feel like that bounce in your step’s getting bigger? HELEN RUSSELL looks into whether we’re all feeling more cheery…

time-read
3 mins  |
Volume 14 - Issue 2
“Unless the Japanese got the US off their backs in the Pacific, they believed they would face complete destruction”
BBC Earth

“Unless the Japanese got the US off their backs in the Pacific, they believed they would face complete destruction”

Eighty years ago Japan’s surprise raid on Pearl Harbor forced the US offthe fence and into the Second World War. Ellie Cawthorne is making a new HistoryExtra podcast series about the attack, and she spoke to Christopher Harding about the long roots of Japan’s disastrous decision

time-read
10+ mins  |
Volume 14 - Issue 2
Your Mysterious Brain
BBC Earth

Your Mysterious Brain

Science has mapped the surface of Mars and translated the code for life. By comparison, we know next to nothing about what’s between our ears. Over the next few pages, we ask leading scientists to answer some of the most important questions about our brains…

time-read
10+ mins  |
Volume 14 - Issue 2
Why Do We Fall In Love?
BBC Earth

Why Do We Fall In Love?

Is it companionship, procreation or something more? DR ANNA MACHIN reveals what makes us so willing to become targets for Cupid’s arrow

time-read
2 mins  |
Volume 14 - Issue 2
Detecting the dead
BBC Earth

Detecting the dead

Following personal tragedy, the creator of that most rational of literary figures, Sherlock Holmes, developed an obsession with spiritualism. Fiona Snailham and Anna Maria Barry explore the supernatural interests of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

time-read
7 mins  |
Volume 14 - Issue 2