Songs from Auschwitz

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

Professor Shirli Gilbert explores the story of Żywulska. Imprisoned in Auschwitz, Żywulska turned to poetry and music, creating some of the most remarkable songs of this tragic era. Born in Poland in 1914, Jewish political prisoner Krystyna Żywulska was sent to Auschwitz in 1943. There she was given a very unusual job. She worked at the Effektenkammer, the storage facility for the personal items confiscated from arriving prisoners. This role turned out to be a gift. It gave Żywulska the space and shelter to secretly compose many poems and songs of resistance and optimism, which quickly became popular and spread throughout the camp. She also put on musical events, in secret, to raise the spirits of other Auschwitz inmates.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
0:11.0	I'm Shirley Gilbert and you're listening to Songs from Auschwitz.
0:20.0	I'm in the corridor of an old office building in southern Poland.
0:27.6	I've come here to meet with the historian Teresa von Torchiche.
0:33.8	We're standing amid the ruins of Auschwitz 2 Birkenau.
0:37.9	The segment of the Auschwitz complex where the gas chambers and crematoria were located.
0:46.2	It's a hot, windy day, and we've stepped out of the sun for a moment,
0:50.6	so Teresa can show me some old maps, questionnaires and fading letters.
0:55.2	That's amazing, and she's writing in German.
0:58.9	All of them relate to one person, a former Auschwitz inmate named Christina Zhivolska.
1:06.9	I'm a writer, historian and musician, and over the last 30 years, I've studied the fate of the
1:13.1	Jewish people during the Nazi era and the music that they made.
1:17.5	Christina Zhivulska and her creative work is distinct.
1:21.8	Zhivulska was very important.
1:24.5	One of the most important writers describing the camp written in the very early period after the war.
1:35.1	Zhivolska was 28 years old when she was sent to Auschwitz in 1943.
1:40.1	She was Jewish, but that's not why she was sent here.
1:43.9	She had managed to conceal her religion from the Nazis
1:46.5	and was arrested as a member of the Polish resistance.
1:50.8	At Auschwitz, she wrote poems and songs that were taken up by fellow prisoners,
1:55.6	helping them to find some resilience amidst the unbearable conditions of camp life.
2:03.3	She became one of the most remarkable witnesses of this notorious place. This is what the Germans did. Let there be no mistake about it,
	...

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