The photo you see now is not just a photo of musicians.
The photo you see now is not just a photo of musicians.
It was one of the indictment documents at the Nuremberg trials. The history of this photo is terrible. On it, the orchestra of prisoners of the Janowska concentration camp (Lviv) performs the “Tango of Death” during the execution of prisoners.
It was one of the indictment documents at the Nuremberg trials. The history of this photo is terrible. On it, the orchestra of prisoners of the Janowska concentration camp (Lviv) performs the “Tango of Death” during the execution of prisoners.
German units captured Lviv just a few days after the start of the Great Patriotic War. Quite quickly, several concentration camps appeared in the city. Four death camps were organized in the suburbs, and a “labor camp” for Jews was organized on Yanovskaya Street in Lviv (now Shevchenko Street).
After the first murders, the camp commandant decided that the executions were somehow boring. To “entertain” the prisoners doomed to death, the Germans organized a real orchestra. 40 musicians were selected from among the prisoners and ordered to play during the executions. The orchestra didn't have much of a choice - either you play or you become the next victim.
During the hanging of prisoners, the orchestra was ordered to perform the tango, during torture - the foxtrot, and sometimes in the evening the orchestra members were forced to play under the windows of the camp commander for several hours at a time. On the eve of the liberation of Lviv by units of the Red Army, the Germans lined up a circle of 40 men from the orchestra. The camp guard surrounded the musicians in a tight ring and ordered them to play. First, the orchestra conductor Mund was executed, then, by order of the commandant, each orchestra member went to the center of the circle, put his instrument on the ground and stripped naked, after which he was shot in the head. All forty people were killed in this brutal manner. In the last minutes of his life, the Yanovsky Orchestra performed that same “Tango of Death”...
It is noteworthy that this “musical” tradition was picked up by other concentration camps in Lvov. Each of them organized its own small orchestra, which accompanied the suffering of the Nazi victims. The Tango of Death was also loved in other camps. But, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people passed through the Lviv camps, after the war none of those who miraculously survived could remember this deadly melody. The notes were lost, and the attempts of the former prisoners to independently reproduce the “Tango of Death” were unsuccessful - at the very first familiar sounds, the victims were seized with panic and they could not come to their senses for several hours. In this extremely unpleasant way, only 8 bars of that terrible melody were established.
From the collection “Inexorable Retribution: Based on materials from the trials of traitors to the Motherland, fascist executioners and agents of imperialist intelligence services”:
“In the camp office, says Anna Poytser, the prisoner Streisberg, whom she knew even before the occupation, worked. He once said that it was unlikely that any of the prisoners would survive and that it would be necessary to take photographs and save them until our arrival, showing the atrocities of the Nazis. Like all prisoners, Streisberg believed that retribution was near. Poytser managed to bring the camera and film from the city and give it to him. Streisberg took several photographs of the SS men and prisoners. This is how the photograph of the doomed orchestra appeared. Poytser took it out of the camp and left it for safekeeping with friends in the city.”
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