The soundtrack of extermination

“A camp is never silent,” wrote Francine Christophe in L’Enfant des camps, her !à! memoir of internment at Bergen-Belsen. The din of the camps is frequently mentioned in survivor literature, and few testifiers fail to touch on some aspect of that unique aural world that bore little resemblance to what prisoners remembered from normal life. The cacophony included the SS screaming orders in German, and Kapos shouting translations in as many as two dozen languages. Police dogs con- tinuously barked, while prisoners cried out in distress, fear and pain as they lay dying. Around the vast Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, at Majdanek, Treblinka and elsewhere, frequent gunshots were heard above the mellifluous strains of string ensembles and orchestras. Indeed, music and song were performed everywhere: for regimentation of daily routines in the camp, to distract or deceive deportees, or to increase suffering. At other times, music in the camps offered solace, both for the prisoners but guards. Drawing on literature, memoirs and witness interviews, this chapter explores the lived and experienced soundscape of Nazi-German concentra- tion and extermination camps.