I'm Shirley Gilbert and you're listening to the music that survived the Nazis, here on the BBC World Service.

In this program we're exploring the remarkable variety and richness of musical life that survived the Nazi era.

While music was used by the Nazis as a powerful propaganda tool and even as a vehicle for torture,

there was also a wealth of spontaneous music making that took place beyond official Nazi scrutiny.

In the early years of the Nazi regime, despite the growing restrictions placed on Jews in Germany,

Jewish musical life endured under the shelter of the Yudersherkul Turbund or Jewish Culture League,

which offered music, art and theatre by Jews for Jewish audiences throughout Germany.

After the outbreak of war in 1939, as the Nazi net widened, music continued to be created by Jews and others all across the Reich.

Many of them interned in the regime's vast system of ghettos, forced labour and concentration camps and even death camps.

In the morning, a black water, this was called coffee.

At 12 o'clock, lunch, it was white water, which was a little bit potato inside this was called soup.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Alice Herzzomow was deported to the Theresienstadt camp near Prague in 1943.

In the evening, again, black water, and we had bread.

It was enough, I believe. Bread, you got enough.

A renowned concert pianist, Alice spent two years in the camp, where she performed more than 100 concerts.

Here she is speaking to the BBC in 1993.

Now comes the good thing.

We, performers, got for every concert a little piece of murder.

This we could give to the children.

I can't describe the condition we were living there.

I can't describe it. Nobody could imagine even.

But we had our concerts we played three times a day.

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