Newly Found Songs from the Holocaust Still Haunt

The history of music is rich with sounds spurred by suffering. During the Holocaust, songs of defiance and belief helped captive Jews confront and temporarily alleviate their misery. Now, a long-lost recording from 1946 is providing a poignant new soundtrack for understanding life in the Nazi concentration camps and Jewish ghettos.

Just after World War II, , a Latvian-born trauma psychologist at the Illinois Institute of Technology, traveled to Europe to with Holocaust survivors. Boder, who was Jewish, wanted to understand the mindset of people who’d lived through the, “just to loosen people up.” And so they would sing songs carried them through their time behind barbed wire.  Boder’s interviews were preserved after his death in 1961, leaving the world with an unintended treasure trove of Holocaust music.