Reviews

Sing, Memory: The Remarkable Story of the Man Who Saved the Music of the Nazi Camps by Makana Eyre

kslaboch's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

3.0

kleonard's review against another edition

3.0

This is a solid but somewhat plodding account of Jewish music-making in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during WWII. Eyre focuses first on Rosebery d’Arguto, a professional musician who organized and led choruses and instrumentalists in performing newly-composed songs. D'Arguto died in the camp, but one of his fellow prisoners was Aleksander Kulisiewicz, a non-Jew who appears to have had an exceptional memory for lyrics, and, one assumes, melody and harmony. Kulisiewicz remembered hundreds of songs composed in the cap, which he dictated after being freed. Eyre focuses on the lyrics far more than the rest of the music, but then this is a book for general readers, not musicians or music scholars. She also follows Kulisiewicz's life after the liberation of the camps, in which he never recovered from the trauma he suffered. The emphasis on lyrics is a little unbalancing, especially as there are no musical examples or links to musical examples to actually hear the pieces, and the writing is a often uneven, but I'm sure plenty of people will find the story inspiring.

meghansen42's review

challenging dark emotional informative reflective tense slow-paced

bradybri's review against another edition

emotional informative sad medium-paced

5.0

srm's review

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Antisemitism, Grief, and War

nanikeeva's review against another edition

4.0

extremely unique story, and also include the standard comments about how deep music runs in humans etc