Music in the Holocaust

In Music in the Holocaust Shirli Gilbert provides the first large-scale critical account of the role of music amongst communities imprisoned under Nazism. She documents a wide scope of musical activities ranging from orchestras and chamber groups to choirs theatres communal sing-songs and cabarets in some of the most important internment centres in Nazi-occupied Europe including Auschwitz and the Warsaw and Vilna ghettos. Gilbert is also concerned with exploring the ways in which music - particularly the many songs that were preserved - contribute to our broader understanding of the Holocaust and the experiences of its victims. Music in the Holocaust is at its core a social history taking as its focus the lives of individuals and communities imprisoned under Nazism. Music opens a unique window on to the internal world of those communities offering insight into how they understood interpreted and responded to their experiences at the time.