This is a song about the concentration camp just outside Prague which was used for propaganda purposes by the nazis to show the red cross how well treated the people were in concentration camps. Schaechter taught the inmates to sing Verdi's Requiem as a protest - because it was in Latin the nazis didnt understand its meaning and relevance.Friedl taught the children to paint to escape their fears. The children's paintings and poems are in the museum there.

Vadens visit to Terezienstadt

The taxi drew up at a place close to Prague
The Bell Tower tall and dark in the gloom
In the war many thousands herded through its gates
In the spring the chestnut trees bloom
A boy wanted to run from his bed in the dirt
From this place where no butterfly flew
A ghetto 'approved' where in secret they sang
Strength grew as barbed wire flowers grew

Ch.                Sing All men Sing
What you cant say you must sing
Sing out a requiem
Sing songs of hope
But sing all men sing

Musicians and artists and leaders of men
To confuse and deceive made a show
Children whose paintings and poems tell all
If you look with your hearts you will know
A fantastic illusion of shops filled with goods
Tears fell as the trucks filled with men
Cos its off to the east when your number is up
Then you'll not see your kinsmen again

From the hunger sprang passion
From the pain sprang a pride
A defiance kept spirits alive
Schaecter taught requiem Freidl her art
6,000 pictures survived
A broken harmonium rang out the tunes
The defiant then taken away
A hearse took the dead by the light of the moon
And delivered the bread in the day


87,000 from here were sent east
Of these 83,000 died
Murdered or tortured or perished on route
Of the children a handful survived
Some try to deny that it happened at all
Soon those that survived will be gone
They defied the oppressors with poems and art
And their spirits live on in our songs

© 9th August 2003
S.Haithwaite