Seven years ago, composer Leo Geyer was rifling through the Auschwitz archives, looking for ways to create a musical score in memory of Martin Gilbert, the British historian and Holocaust expert who had died in February that year.
Geyer, 31, then made an astonishing discovery. He stumbled across fragments of music played by orchestras at the camp that had remained untouched for nearly 80 years.
On Monday, part of ‘The Orchestras of Auschwitz’, an opera ballet created by Geyer using those fragments and survivors’ accounts of the death camp, was performed by an orchestra at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London.
Speaking about one fragment titled Futile Regrets, Geyer said: “The handwriting is identical to mine. It sent goosebumps down my spine and I felt it was my duty to finish it.
“In this harrowing and heart-wrenching composition, the composer is trying to express what they are feeling and it is deeply sorrowful. Because of the nature of the sketch and its emotional weight, it seems unlikely that this ever would have been performed.”
Leo Geyer in rehearsal
Most of the music at Auschwitz was destroyed before the camp was liquidated, so arranging what remained was a challenge. Geyer pieced together 210 musical fragments in a process he described as “recomposing”.
“The equivalent is hundreds of pieces of broken ceramic. Trying to put them together again to make vases is extraordinarily difficult because you don’t know what bits go with what and, in many cases, pieces are entirely missing.
“This has required years of cross-referencing with people’s testimonies to understand what instruments were available at what time, who was playing when and to start to piece together the music of Auschwitz.”
There were orchestras in numerous concentration camps during the Holocaust. Some Nazis realised the advantages of playing marching music to forced labourers, while other officers wanted to be entertained. Some musicians were spared death if they could play in an orchestra.
The arrangement of the pieces reflected the instruments available at the time, resulting in what Geyer described as an “extremely strange-looking orchestra”. The absence of certain instruments created a “peculiar, twisted and somewhat sinister sound,” he said.
Through their music, Geyer has come to know the composers of the fragments intimately, and cited the late conductor and Auschwitz survivor Simon Laks – one of the composers of the fragments - as one figure he feels connected to.
Leo Geyer
Laks, who led the Birkenau Men’s Orchestra, faced the daunting task of composing and rehearsing complicated pieces within a day or risk execution by SS Commanders. Sometimes all he had to compose music on the whim of Nazi officers.
Geyer said: "On countless occasions, he was writing really complicated pieces of music down from memory. He had to do extraordinary things where an SS Commander would come over and whistle a tune to him and then within a day he had to write that down, orchestrate it for multiple parts, rehearse it and then present it. If it wasn’t up to standard then he would have been murdered. Under those conditions, he survived."
Laks survived the Holocaust and testified about his experiences in ‘Mélodies d’Auschwitz’, where he described the marching music as a supplementary torture instrument.
The marching music provided a beat for prisoners as they walked to the fields and factories. Geyer said this music was “upbeat, lively and jolly” but he noted the unimaginable juxtaposition of slave labourers hearing the music as they returned carrying the dead.
“To hear this music for the first time was horrifying,” he said.
Leo Geyer with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a surviving member of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz
From the marching music to compositions by inmates, ‘The Orchestras of Auschwitz’ presents a series of vignettes that function on their own and also in a sequence. This means the piece can “bring together a variety of different people’s stories, different pieces of music from different orchestras, with a narrative which is completely true”.
Accuracy, of course, was essential, and Geyer worked closely with survivors, particularly the Lasker-Wallfisch family. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was a cellist in the Auschwitz orchestra and is now the only survivor of any of the orchestras.
Speaking to The Holocaust Memorial Trust, Lasker-Wallfisch said, “I survived nearly one year in Auschwitz without any doubt due to the fact that I became a member of the camp orchestra. As long as the Germans wanted an orchestra, it would have been counter-productive to kill us.”
Her grandson, Simon Wallfisch, is a professional musician and was one of the first people to hear Geyer’s recomposition when they performed together at Highgate Shul in 2017. Wallfisch was also part of the performance at Sadler’s Wells, singing baritone.
Geyer is not Jewish and said he did not feel a close link to the Shoah until he worked on this music. He is hoping that uncovering this forgotten music will bring the horror of the Holocaust home to people. “This is something humanity did to itself,” he said.
The Sadler’s Wells performance is just the beginning for Geyer, who seeks funding to complete the full score. His ambitious vision includes a London production followed by an international tour, ultimately bringing the music back to Poland.
