Thanks to the incredible pianist and performer Hershey Felder, I had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz in late 2022 alongside my wife Stephanie, Hershey and a group of talented young artists.
One of the first things our tour guide showed us was where the camp's prisoner orchestra was forced to perform - right inside the entrance to the camp just following the "arbeit macht frei" ("work makes you free") sign. The tour guide then asked the group what kind of music we thought an orchestra at Auschwitz would play. Most people replied with some variation on the word "sad," which we quickly learned was not true. In fact, the role of music in the camp was very similar to the absolutely false "arbeit macht frei" sign; it was a weapon of sorts. Instead of playing sad music for the newly arrived prisoners, the orchestra would actually play very happy music - music you might hear at a circus or a carnival, for example. Similar to the "arbeit macht frei" sign, this happy sounding music was meant to provide the prisoners a sense of false hope, to make selection easier for the Nazis by using the music to create a false sense of calm during and to “drown out the screams of the dying.”
I’ve long-been fascinated by both the Holocaust and the treatment of music, especially jazz music, during that time; immediately after discovering that our tour guide for the day was not only the head of the Auschwitz Museum but also a classical pianist, I peppered him with questions about the treatment of jazz music in the camp.
He told me that despite the Nazi government’s official take on jazz and the laws against the music (Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbles referred to the music as "Americano nigger kike jungle music"), many of the Nazi guards actually loved jazz music and performing it, and upon discovering prisoners who could play jazz, would force those who could into having jazz jam sessions. While I couldn’t agree more with the following Wynton Marsalis statement on jazz (“Jazz means working things out musically with other people. You have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don't agree with what they're playing. It teaches you the very opposite of racism and anti-Semitism. It teaches you that the world is big enough to accommodate us all…“) I can't help but wonder how a prisoner would handle a jam session knowing that they could outplay their guard, and how a guard might treat that better-playing prisoner.
Hershey shared a story with us about a survivor he met who credited his survival in Auschwitz to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue.” How so? There was a Nazi guard who loved the piece and knew of this particular prisoner’s familiarity with it. So he made the prisoner sing it to him every day - and that’s why he survived.
It's easy to forget that Germany was an arts-forward democracy in the 1920's and the same rise in popularity that jazz music experienced at that time in America was also experienced in Germany.
That said, Hitler and his henchmen saw jazz as a threat to everything they believed, one that had to be stopped. As Stella Coomes wrote in "Jazz Banned: How Jazz Music Shaped Nazi Germany:”
The term ‘negermusik’ was coined, and while the linguistic origins may be obvious, the term was loaded with cultural implication: blacks were associated with exaggerated sexuality and were deemed to be “morally and aesthetically inferior to high German culture.” Extremists even believed that blacks and Jews were using jazz music as part of a larger attack on German society. Blacks were thought to be using the “sexual ingredient” of jazz music naively without any planning or purpose, as they were not considered to have the brain capacity to properly strategize. The Jews, who were thought to have more brain capacity but use it for evil, were then blamed for taking that ingredient and arranging it to systematically target and seduce German women and girls as part of a larger plot.
Here’s a list of some of the laws Nazi’s put in place regarding jazz music:
1. Pieces in foxtrot rhythm (so-called swing) are not to exceed 20% of the repertoire of light orchestras and dance bands.
2. In this so-called jazz type repertoire, preference is to be given to compositions in a major key and to lyrics expressing joy in life rather than Jewishly gloomy lyrics;
3. As to tempo, preference is also to be given to brisk compositions over slow ones (so- called blues); however, the pace must not exceed a certain degree of allegro, commensurate with the Aryan sense of discipline and moderation. On no account will Negroid excesses in tempo (so-called hot jazz) or in solo performances (so-called breaks) be tolerated;
4. So-called jazz compositions may contain at most 10% syncopation; the remainder must consist of a natural legato movement devoid of the hysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the barbarian races and conductive to dark instincts alien to the German
people (so-called riffs);
5. Strictly prohibited is the use of instruments alien to the German spirit (so-called
cowbells, flexatone, brushes, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instruments into a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl (so-called wa-wa, hat, etc.).
Interestingly, at about the same time, Henry Ford had similar fears about Jazz being a Jewish plot to corrupt American society. As Ford wrote in volume three of his The International Jew series, “Many people have wondered whence come the waves upon waves of musical slush that invade decent homes and set the young people of this generation imitating the drivel of morons. Popular music is a Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.”
His solution? Make the square dance the official dance of the United States. As Robyn Pennacchia wrote in Quartz, “To understand how square dancing became a state-mandated means of celebrating Americana, it’s necessary to go back to Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Vehicles. Ford hated jazz; he hated the Charleston. He also really hated Jewish people, and believed that Jewish people invented jazz as part of a nefarious plot to corrupt the masses and take over the world—a theory that might come as a surprise to the black people who actually did invent it.”
And in terms of accomplishing that dream, he forced his workers to do it and, as Erin Marquis wrote in Jalopnik, “in order to bring his dream to life, Ford poured tons of money into square dancing and country music in general. In 1926, he published an instruction manual for aspiring square dancing instructors. He also required his employees to attend the square dancing events he created for them, funded fiddling contests and radio shows promoting “old time dancing music,” as well as the creation of square dancing clubs across the US—where modern, Western-style square dancing as we know it now was really created…Ford saw these dances as intrinsically white, and thus more intrinsically wholesome. Along with his wife and their square dance instructor Benjamin Lovett, he campaigned to bring square dancing to the physical education classes of students across the country, believing it would teach children ‘social training, courtesy, good citizenship, along with rhythm.’ The schools agreed, and by 1928, almost half the schools in America were teaching square dancing and other forms of old-fashioned dancing to students.”
As of today, the square dance is the official dance of 23 states.
Anyway, back in Europe, despite all of their efforts, Hitler and his henchman were having a hard time clamping down on the popularity of jazz music and eventually decided to repurpose the music - much of which was composed by Jews - as propaganda. From Mike Erin’s “Swing Under The Nazis:”
It was out of this idea that Joseph Goebbels created the Templin Orchestra. Later re-named ‘Charlie and his Orchestra,’ it consisted of the best jazz musicians in Europe, who played swing music as accompaniment for parody lyrics, which poked fun at Americans and their allies. They would perform covers of traditional popular music, usually with the first verse untouched but with subsequent lyrics re-written to act as blatant Nazi propaganda, assuring people that Germany was winning the war, and that Churchill was a “drunken megalomaniac who hid in the cellars at night to avoid German bombs.” The smash hit “Little Sir Echo,” for example, was performed with the following lyrics: “Poor Mr. Churchill, how do you do?/Hello... Hello.../Your famous convoys are not coming through/Hello.../German U boats are making you sore.../You’re a nice little fellow, but by now you should know/That you never can win this war.”25 After the British Prime Minister, the Jews, unsurprisingly, were a favorite target. Lyrics to covers such as “Makin’ Whoopee” blamed the Jews for the war, singing of “Another war, another profit/Another Jewish business trick.” Interestingly enough, the music was not meant for the German public, as it still employed rhythms and musical techniques which were condemned by the Nazi party. Rather, it was meant to target the Allied war effort, sending political messages and spreading Nazi thought to a wider and perhaps unsuspecting audience by “polluting the airwaves.”
The Nazis would hold dances where this repurposed Jewish-composed swing music would be played by bands like Charlie’s. A favorite of theirs to request was “Cootie Cootie,” which was a retitling of the Andrews Sisters’ hit called “Joseph Joseph” that had been banned because in addition to “Joseph” being Goebbels’ first name, the song had originally been based on a Yiddish song.
STAY TUNED FOR PART 2 - COMING SOON…