Dachau song
The Dachau song is a march and perseverance song from the Dachau concentration camp from 1938 . The text is by Jura Soyfer , the music by Herbert Zipper .
Soyfer was imprisoned in the Dachau camp for three months, from June 23 to September 23. Together with Zipper, he did forced labor and took the mockery of the prisoners by the concentration camp gate saying “ Arbeit macht frei ” as an opportunity to write a song text that included the saying in the chorus. He let Zipper learn the text by heart in order to avoid the risk of discovery and the associated punitive measures. Zipper composed a melody in his head that he taught to two guitarists and a violinist among the inmates.
The song only hints at the torture and violence of everyday life in the concentration camp, but nevertheless hit the emotional level of the tormented coercive community. Zipper wrote about the music:
"It was my intention to avoid clichés, both harmonically and melodically, while maintaining the character of a marching song that expresses the harshness of mental and physical resistance."
While Zipper was released in 1939 after being transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp , Soyfer died of typhus there that same year .
On the occasion of the commemoration “75 years of memory of the 1st transport of Austrian prisoners to the Dachau concentration camp” (1938) with Transport Minister Doris Bures, Beatrix Neundlinger and Willi Resetarits, musicians of the butterflies , performed the Dachau song on April 8, 2013 at the Westbahnhof Vienna.
literature
- Janne Biermann: "Stay human, comrade" . In: Dreaming of Freedom. Songs of the persecuted . Edited by Jonas Höltig and Tassilo Rinecker, Norderstedt / Münster 2018, ISBN 9783752859133 , p. 61 ff.
Web links
- Text of the Dachau song (PDF; 32 kB)
- Free mp3: Das Dachaulied (www.freiklick.at: audio sample, text, notes, backgrounds)
- Das Dachaulied (Stream)
- Ernst Antoni: Stay human, comrade in antifa 11-12 / 2012
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dieter Schmutzer: Wienerisch g'redt: History of Viennese dialect poetry . Verlag Der Apfel, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-85450-070-X , p. 36 .
- ↑ Renate Sassmann: Dachaulied, sung by the butterflies April 8, 2013 youtube.com, video 4:39 min, uploaded April 9, 2013, accessed February 13, 2017.
- ↑ 75 years of memory of the first transport of Austrian prisoners to the Dachau concentration camp APA OTS, ÖBB, April 2, 2013, accessed February 13, 2017.