The singing horses of Buchenwald

Abused music in Nazi concentration camps.

Music is generally considered to have a healing power that has a positive effect on the human psyche.

The intention of this project is to show that it could be perverted into the opposite in unimaginable ways under inhumane circumstances.

Survivors will have their say.

Works by Erwin Schulhoff, Szymon Laks, Viktor Ullman, Hans Krasá, Pavel Haas and Gideon Klein will be performed, as well as short arrangements of popular pop and operetta melodies from the repertoire list of the Ausschwitz-Birkenau Women's Orchestra, whose original line-up also forms the basis of the ensemble.

Rarely has an event moved me as much, shaken me as “The Singing Horses of Buchenwald”. It requires the audience to comprehend the experiences of extreme pain and humiliation recorded in music and written testimonies, without glossing over or appeasing. By juxtaposing the compositions of the murdered, the records of survivors and the inhumanly instrumentalized popular music of the time in an oppressive way, she brings us closer to the pain, but also the dignity of human beings in the face of extreme suffering, without smoothing or aestheticizing. At a time when the Shoah is increasingly trivialized, the uncompromising nature of this performance is particularly important.