Ballads and Broadsides USHMM CD-355 ISBN: 978-0-89604-713-6 Songs from Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1940-1945 By Aleksander Kulisiewicz Conceived and researched by Bret Werb, USHMM musicologist, and Barbara Milewski, Assistant Professor of Music at Swarthmore College The accompanying 60-page booklet includes original Polish texts, English translations, archival illustrations, an introductory essay, plus commentary. Total Time: 54:19 http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/books/detail.php?content=2008-10-14 |
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Aleksander Kulisiewicz was a student in German-occupied Poland in October 1939 when the Gestapo arrested him for antifascist writings and sent him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. A talented performer and songwriter, he composed 54 songs during five years of imprisonment, presenting them at secret gatherings to help inmates cope with despair and sustain hope of survival. The historic recordings on this CD were selected from the Kulisiewicz Collection at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C. They offer a representative sample of Kulisiewicz’s extraordinary artistic output and a sense of his personal response to the realities of life in a Nazi concentration camp. |