Inside page of the January 1946, no. 1 issue of the Yiddish DP newspaper, ‘Buchenwald: Bulletin of the Buchenwald Youth in France.’ The column on the left is entitled, ‘Our Lives’. At the bottom is a poem called ‘The Song of Buchenwald’ (translated into Yiddish), sung by all the Buchenwald internees. [Photograph #44247] Source: http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/central-europe/buchenwald/Herman Leopoldi, composer of the Buchenwald song (“Buchenwaldlied”), August 15, 1888 – June 28, 1959. The camp commandant organized a song competition soon after the camp opened. Leopoldi and his partner Fritz Lohner-Beda wrote the winning entry, although a non-Jewish kapo submitted it to the contest. The camp guards would command prisoners to sing the Buchenwaldlied as a way to cover up the sounds of torture and other acts of cruelty and murder. Some prisoners found meaning in this song as a symbol of resistance. Singing of freedom and the future gave them the opportunity to express their hopes for the demise of their captors.
To listen to a recording of the song, please click here.
Rabbi Deborah Miller was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She and her husband live in New Jersey with their daughter, born in January 2013. Rabbi Miller is a certified chaplain and book lover.
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