In these critical times, with intolerance, anti-semitism and racism on the rise in many lands and new instances of terrorism and genocide reported in the headlines every day, it becomes increasingly important for us to reaffirm our commitment to peace and brotherhood among the nations. We owe it to ourselves to keep alive the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and to hope that it may serve as a lesson and warning to future generations. My lecture/concert, based on my book The Undying Flame : Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust attempts to do just that.
For more information visit www.jerrysilverman.org .
Jerry Silverman is a musicologist and author of many books on music including Immigrant Song Book, Songs and Stories of the American Revolution, and Just Listen to This Song I’m Singing: African-American History Through Song. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
More than one hundred songs of the Holocaust in sixteen languages with English translations and an accompanying CD.
Here for the first time is a stirring collection of rare songs of the Holocaust; songs of resistance, despair, rage, hope, and even humor, written in the face of utter evil. The very existence of these songs raises haunting questions. The extensive historical notes and insightful survivor testimony in this groundbreaking volume provide moving answers.
Musicologist Jerry Silverman has compiled and presents an expansive collection of Holocaust-era folk music in sixteen languages that he situates within a vivid historical framework. This volume represents the work of concentration camp prisoners and inhabitants of the ghettos of Eastern Europe, subversive European cabaret music, anti-Fascist Russian Army songs, and songs of Resistance fighters.
Silverman has conducted exhaustive research that took in many countries to unearth this material, and in some cases, where the original music has been lost, set the words to music using traditional melodies. Included are songs of prewar Germany and of postwar reflection by such balladeers as Pete Seeger, Janis Ian, and Si Kahn.
