Alma Rosé: Her Resistance Song in Auschwitz | Jause, WoO6

This Jause is pulled from Classical Cake, op. 7 – titled “Alma Rosé: Orchestrating Survival”

My guests are:

  • Dr. Michaela Raggam-Blesch from the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna

  • Dr. Heidemarie Uhl, a member of the Austrian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the International Scientific Advisory Board of the House of Austrian History

  • Dr. Monika Sommer, director of the House of Austrian History.

In this excerpt, we’re talking about the song of resistance that Alma Rosé wrote while imprisoned in the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

TRANSCRIPT

HEIDEMARIE UHL: …there was one piece that was kind of resistance.

MICHAELA RAGGAM-BLESCH: Yes, it was In mir klingt ein Lied (A song rings out within me) and, at that time, it was this Chopin étude that was made into a popular song in the 30s.

And Alma [took] up this text and made something else out of it and kind of rewrote… It's similar lyrics, but the message is very subtle. Very much a feeling of hope or freedom…

UHL: Freedom. For being liberated and living again free.

RAGGAM-BLESCH: And this is something that the SS picked up on. So they were performing this piece and – there were not only instrumentalists in the orchestra, but there were also singers – and the SS kind of understood this subtle message and they actually forbade the orchestra to perform it. They could only perform it instrumentally from then on.

And this became somehow very… some of the surviving orchestra members refer to this song and still associate it a lot with Alma and their time in Birkenau.

And it was somehow an act of resistance, [they] still secretly performed this piece of music in the barracks.

[Music playing]

English translation of lyrics

A song rings out within me.
a beautiful song.
and it stirs the memories within my soul.
My heart was silent.
Now, I hear soft sounds again,
calling everything within me.

Life was far away
and wishes were foreign.
My heart! How quiet you were for a long time.
But, now you’ve reawakened
all my happiness and my desires,
deep longing, sleepless fear.

Everything, everything is alive again.
I just want
peace for my heart.
I just want peace,
not to think anymore
about a beautiful song.

Daniel Maltz