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Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps.

Article Excerpt
Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps. By Shirli Gilbert. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. [xxii, 243 p. ISBN 0-927797-4. $45.] Index, bibliography, appendix, music examples, illustrations.

When one takes into consideration the weight of testimony and analysis of events pertaining to the Nazi attempt to obliterate European Jewry during the Holocaust it comes as a surprise to find that Shirli Gilbert's Music in the Holocaust is one of the few available works in English that attempts to discuss and analyze the role of music in Nazi ghettos and concentration camps. Much of the available literature deals with music and musical personages in two widely different concentration camps, Auschwitz, which primarily functioned as an extermination center with subcamps designed for forced labor, and Terezin (Theresienstadt), which functioned as a holding center but whose active cultural life was permitted by the Nazis for public relations purposes.

With the exception of these two areas, researchers working in the field of music and its use in ghettos and concentration camps need to access diverse sources in order to obtain information. I hoped that this volume would present a consolidation of information, and many...

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