(JEWISH GROUP) 80 years later, we still lack pop music remembering the Holocaust [View all]
“To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric” is the famous quote by Theodor W. Adorno.
The question for me today on Yom Hashoah, the 80th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust: Is it still barbaric to make music about it?
My two great passions are Jewish history and popular music. Over the decades, the greatest moral struggles of our time have been set to pop music, issues like war, civil rights and the environment among them.
Here is the “good” news: Yes, the Holocaust appears in popular music. The “bad” news: You need to know where to look for it.
First, the Holocaust has shown up in popular music in horrific ways in songs that glorify the Nazis and their crimes. There are songs about Auschwitz and about Nazi physician Josef Mengele’s medical experiments. The Sex Pistols recorded a song about Bergen-Belsen. Those songs, and the bands that recorded them, deserve to fade into obscurity.
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The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
April 19, 1943 - May 16, 1943