Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps (Oxford Historical Monographs) - Hardcover

Gilbert, Shirli

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199277974 ISBN 13: 9780199277971

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 2005

Synopsis

In Music in the Holocaust Shirli Gilbert provides the first large-scale, critical account in English 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.

About this title

About the Author

Shirli Gilbert is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

Review

"Gilbert's work is predicated upon a debunking of a commonly held view of the role served by music in the context under discussion. Gilbert's text 'Challenges the widespread and simplistic conception of music as spiritual resistance...in its place, it presents a more complex, multi-layered portrait of what Primo Levi called the 'Grey Zone' that constituted captive life.' It provides much needed information both to researches and interested lay people and is therefore highly recommended." --Notes

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0199277974
• ISBN 13: 9780199277971
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 266