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This event was made possible by the generous support of the Irene C. Rechnic Holocaust Education Fund.

Presented in partnership with the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies.

Featuring members of University Symphony Orchestra

Oriol Sans, conductor

Members of University Symphony Orchestra perform works that were uncovered in the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum by Patricia Hall, Professor Emerita of Music Theory at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

For more than forty years, Hall has explored archives all over the world, looking for significant musical manuscripts that have been forgotten, lost, or ignored.

In 2016, she went on a somber quest, visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to search its collection for musical manuscripts. One in particular, a foxtrot called “Die schönste Zeit des Lebens,” struck Hall because of the horrible irony of its title, which translates to “the most beautiful time of life.” She learned that the music had been copied by hand and arranged by Polish political prisoners in the Auschwitz I men’s orchestra during World War II.

Music played a role in the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust, with official prisoner orchestras existing in most camps. The ensembles in Auschwitz, populated by many professional musicians, included a brass band and a symphony orchestra. Members of the ensembles were compelled to play an array of music for a variety of purposes, from background music as prisoners were marched to and from their work assignments to performing concerts for the SS, Hitler’s elite guard unit that ran the camps.

Hall returned to Ann Arbor with scans of the existing copies of the manuscript for that song and embarked on a collaborative effort with SMTD students and faculty–including conductor Oriol Sans, who was at the time an SMTD assistant professor of music–to present it in concert. The project also involved transcribing the handwritten copies into printed notation and creating a recording that closely matches how the song would have sounded as performed in Auschwitz in 1943. The recording, Hall said, was then returned to the museum and made available to researchers.

Program

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Related event
Free | No ticket required
“Performing Foxtrots from Auschwitz-Birkenau”
By Patricia Hall, Professor Emerita of Music Theory at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance

October 5, 2025 at 11 am
Collins Recital Hall
Hamel Music Center

In this presentation, Professor Hall will explain the process she used in reconstructing music played in Auschwitz from manuscript parts preserved in the Collections Department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.