Music or Not

by Pier Marton | Jan 30, 2011 | Antisemitism, Doc, Film, Jewish, Middle-East, Music, Shoah, Women

The violins of Auschwitz on CNN
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Auschwitz orchestra
This film, La Chaconne d’Auschwitz/Back in Auschwitz
One ordinary, inhuman day: music and extermination overlapped. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, some forty female musicians were ordered by their tormentors to perform if they were to survive. Death probably awaited them at the end of their concert. But those who are sometimes called “the ladies of the orchestra” did not necessarily play without conviction. Scattered around the world, in Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Munich, Karlovy-Vary, Kracow, New York and a kibbutz near Tel Aviv, the survivors share a stubborn memory of this world that one day gave annihilation its own rhythm. Another woman appears during these memories of the gray zone: the orchestra leader, Alma Rosé, revered both by the musicians and the Nazis.

News & Olds

BREAK THE SURFACE
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To ride the unbalance* between:
1. excellence and a kind, singular and porous identity that contains some of the scruples, humor, humility, musicality & the beauty of a harsh and confusing, yet benign and rich reality – away from distractions.
2. the stupidity and blindness of complacency, violence, injustice, pretense, egos, short-term… wishful… and group “thinking,” and empty talk – in all of their surprising embodiments. And the false sense of fullness all of this provides.
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An appeal for a world NOT so caught up in anthropo/ego/euro/ethno/oculo/esthetico -CENTRISM.
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1. Beware of those who claim to be strong – they are often dangerous.
2. Unmask the hoax of “centrality” – ask an “EX-centric” for assistance?
3. Perceive the arrogance of normalcy: everybody, in one way or another, is handicapped… which brings us back to 1.
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*Not unrelated to “There is beauty and there are the humiliated. Whatever difficulties the enterprise may present, I should like never to be unfaithful either to the second or the first.” — Albert Camus