“Jüdischer Todessang" taken from the CD Songs from the Depths of Hell, courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways.
Music from the Camps
Topical Song
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Jüdischer Todessang
The 'Jüdischer Todessang' (Jewish death song) was written in Sachsenhausen by Martin Rosenberg, aka Rosebery D'Arguto. According to his fellow inmate Aleksander Kulisiewicz, D’Arguto and the choir he had established in the camp found out in late 1942 that a transport would soon be taking Jewish prisoners to Auschwitz-Birkenau or Majdanek. In response to this news, D’Arguto wrote a song named the ‘Jüdischer Todessang’ (Jewish death song) based on the Yiddish folk melody ‘Tsen Brider’ (Ten brothers). The song was transformed by D’Arguto’s pen into a painful record of the Jews’ present-day destruction, as the ten brothers are killed in the gas chambers. Soon thereafter, in October 1942, D’Arguto and the choir were sent to Auschwitz.