I love reading about the political and personal background to songs. However, I don't love the who-has-done-worse, who-has-suffered-most approach. But I do love for instance Dave's wife perspective. That was a completely new thought for me (not singing these songs in company). Of course, that perspective is a fairly subjective perspective and may differ in others, but songs are subjective as well and do tend not to be completely balanced ("shouldn't we insert a verse about Auschwitz for balance?". They are sometimes even not fair or factually correct. But there's no reason to expect that. Songs are written to transport emotion, hope, despair and, at least since the invention of printing, the more balanced and fact oriented apporach is done in prose and in history books.

So hearing about family traditions and about feelings helps me to understand the reasons why these songs have been written. BTW, in political (and personal) discussions trying to listen to what someone else feels most times helps more than debating the facts cited for a feeling.

Another point: I have read here the good thought that some really catastrophic events don't lead to songs written at that time. Some of our songs about the black death for instance have been written after the event. If I was fighting for my life with nearly no hope of survival I's sing the songs I know and would not have the strength to write a new one. Times of hardship with no immediate danger to life, however, are good times for songs. Songs of lamenting, of hope, of accusations. But you need a bit of hope and strength remaining to be able to write a song.

So, there are actually loads of songs from concentration camps (I have a book full of them; the best know in English is 'peatbog soldiers'). But these are the songs written by people living under duress and hard conditions with physical and verbal abuse but with no immediate threat to be killed. These people (opposition to the Nazis) could hope for an end to the Nazi terror before their own death. I know of no song (written at that time) about the later extermination camps (for Jews, Roma,...). If there were any such songs, they'd have died with their writers half an hour later.

Very close to being an exception from what I've written are of course the poems (often set to music by others later) by Katzenelson in the Ghetto, during the uprising, and during waiting for the final transport. I'm fairly sure he has made a last poem in the packed train to Auschwitz, but we shall never know it.

Wolfgang