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resources. C-D-K-N-G.co/audio. Welcome to the

1:57

New Books Network. Hello,

2:00

welcome to the New Books in

2:02

Jewish Studies channel of the New

2:04

Books Network podcast. I am your

2:07

host Ari Barb Lat. Today I'm

2:09

blessed to engage in a dialogue

2:11

with Alexandra Birch. She is Melon

2:13

Teaching Fellow at the Harriman Institute

2:15

and lecturer in history at

2:18

Columbia University. We will discuss her

2:20

newly published book, Hitler's Twilight

2:23

of the Gods, Music, and

2:25

the Orchestration of War in

2:27

Genocide in Europe. published in

2:30

Toronto by University of Toronto

2:32

Press 2025. Alexandra, I'm

2:34

grateful and honour to be in

2:36

dialogue with you today. Thanks so

2:38

much for having me. I'm looking

2:41

forward to talking about the book.

2:43

To begin, please kindly tell us

2:45

about yourself or did you grow

2:47

up what formative offence in

2:49

your life inspired the scholar he

2:52

would later become. Sure, so I

2:54

grew up. across the US.

2:56

I lived in rural Colorado

2:58

and Arizona mostly. I speak

3:01

Russian, I speak German, and I've played

3:03

violin since I was two years old.

3:05

So music has always been a huge

3:07

part of my life and training all

3:09

the time since I was a very

3:12

small child. I ended up going

3:14

to my bachelor's master's and

3:16

doctorate in violin performance. And throughout

3:18

I always maintained a very

3:20

scholarly bet from high school all the

3:23

way through my first doctorate. And I

3:25

was always wanting to do more on

3:27

the scholarship side. So after I finished

3:29

my PhD, or sorry, my DMA, Doctor

3:31

of Musical Arts, I went back in

3:33

and I did a postdoc at the

3:35

United States Holocaust Museum, where I was

3:37

really fortunate to work with recovered

3:39

music from the Holocaust. So that's

3:41

kind of my major professional, major

3:44

professional goal, is to work with

3:46

recovered music, find it, perform it, and so

3:48

on. And throughout the process, I also

3:51

became interested in the music

3:53

of perpetratorsrators. and what that

3:55

what that might look like both

3:57

in the buildup to the second.

3:59

World War and also what

4:02

identities remain durable throughout the

4:04

war. So I went back into academia

4:06

in 2020 with COVID. I did my

4:08

PhD in history. And now I'm working

4:10

on this recovered music project in

4:12

a much longer, much larger

4:14

context at the Harriman Institute

4:17

of Columbia as a postdoc

4:19

and I'm working on recovered music

4:21

from both the Gulag and from

4:23

the Holocaust. So that's kind of

4:25

my general background. What inspired you

4:28

to write this book? What message do

4:30

you hold to convey to readers?

4:32

So I became very interested

4:34

in this durability of

4:37

identity, particularly on the

4:39

perpetrator side. So I was initially

4:41

seeing reports from the

4:43

Ainsascoopah, so from the

4:45

shooting brigades of the Holocaust

4:48

in the East, about compelled music

4:50

and musical sadism, and

4:52

music is this really

4:54

important part of... troop engagement

4:56

in the genocidal process. At

4:58

the same time, I also

5:00

read these two social and

5:03

military histories of the Wehrmacht,

5:05

the first of which is

5:07

Edwesterman's Drunk on Genocide, which

5:09

is this phenomenal book about

5:12

alcohol use during the Holocaust

5:14

and also by the Wehrmacht in

5:16

warfare. And then the other

5:18

one is a much more popular

5:20

history, which is Norman Ullr's Blitz,

5:23

which is about drug use. And

5:25

as a musician, I know that music

5:27

can be similarly powerful

5:30

to alcohol to even

5:33

psychoactive stimulants like Pervita

5:35

and the drugs which were

5:37

being prescribed. And I became

5:39

curious about what music was

5:42

being listened to by the

5:44

troops. What music are they

5:46

listening to? and why and for what

5:48

purpose and how durable is that not

5:50

only with the outbreak of war but

5:52

then all the way through the war

5:54

and into collapse and in genocidal situations

5:57

and I was quite shocked in researching

5:59

the book to see how durable

6:01

that Teutonic identity is and the

6:03

way that this carried over from

6:05

mass shootings into the concentration camp

6:08

system and then how strong this

6:10

identity remained for the command even

6:12

in collapse. And so then as

6:15

I close the book, the question

6:17

for me as a musician was

6:19

how do we move forward and

6:22

how do we move forward with

6:24

classical music even in the wake

6:26

of national socialism? What are the

6:28

primary themes in your book? What

6:31

story and stories does your book

6:33

tell? So the overall structure of

6:35

the book is a deliberate parallel

6:38

to Wagner's ring cycle. And so

6:40

the cycle of opera is telling

6:42

the heroic story of Siegfried. And

6:45

so the opening prelude, which is

6:47

kind of, you know, your typical

6:49

introduction of a book outlining your

6:51

methodology and so on, is meant

6:54

to be the prelude to desk

6:56

line gold, a play on. Thus

6:58

Feingold is Das Feigold, right, where

7:01

we're looking at the early days

7:03

of national socialism, the rise to

7:05

power of Hitler, and how music

7:08

was a component of that in

7:10

state craft and identity shaping, instead

7:12

of thunder and lightning for the...

7:15

for the opening acts of Siegfried,

7:17

for the second opera in the

7:19

cycle, we have Donna and Litzkig,

7:21

so the thunder and the lightning

7:24

fast attack, right, the outbreak of

7:26

war in Western Europe, looking at

7:28

troop song, and between... the like

7:31

what the troops were singing what

7:33

they were taking into combat with

7:35

them. I was able to look

7:38

at and also translate a number

7:40

of troop songs and see what's

7:42

what's important to them. I moved

7:44

in to looking at the Holocaust

7:47

in the East and in kind

7:49

of the chapters on the Holocaust,

7:51

both look at the two chapters

7:54

on the Holocaust, look at the

7:56

Ainsa Scuba in the East and

7:58

musical sadism and then how that

8:01

use of music was institutionalized in

8:03

the camp system. So I look

8:05

at Treblinka specifically. and how we

8:07

can understand sound in Treblinka, how

8:10

sound and Treblinka provides us with

8:12

a more complete understanding of the

8:14

site. And then I finally pivot

8:17

to the end of the war,

8:19

looking at the command, in contrast

8:21

to the command, the experience of

8:24

individuals on death marches and the

8:26

durability of SS identity to the

8:28

end of the war, guarding prisoners.

8:30

And then with the redemption motif

8:33

as we find at the end

8:35

of the opera to Damaring, I

8:37

also look at the redemption. of

8:40

classical music, redemption with a question

8:42

mark. So really, it's a play

8:44

between perpetrator and victim experiences of

8:47

music, both in the war and

8:49

in the Holocaust, without a big

8:51

distinction between warfare in the Holocaust

8:53

and the chapters, and this kind

8:56

of vugnarian and Teutonic underpinning, which

8:58

provides a framework for the entire

9:00

text. Which scholarly works had the

9:03

greatest impact on your thinking on

9:05

this topic? Can you explain how

9:07

your thoughts changed through such scholarship?

9:10

Sure. So the two big books

9:12

which kicked off the entire project

9:14

I've already mentioned, which was Edward

9:16

Westerman's Drunk On Genocide, which I

9:19

think is a phenomenal study of

9:21

if alcohol was either necessary or

9:23

sufficient to mediate the trauma of

9:26

perpetrating genocide, which he concludes that

9:28

it was not. So alcohol in

9:30

other words was neither necessary nor

9:33

sufficient to mediate the horror of

9:35

a genocidal experience. And of course

9:37

Westerman is building then on people

9:40

like Christopher Browning, Daniel Goldhagen, who

9:42

are looking at how the Ainsau

9:44

school, but how the troops in

9:46

the East, in both of their

9:49

cases, the police battalion 101, how

9:51

they were able to commit genocide

9:53

and what percentage of people were

9:56

active shooters and things like this.

9:58

So that's always perpetrator psychology is

10:00

very interesting to me and what

10:03

people need to mediate genocide. or

10:05

to be able to commit genocide,

10:07

I think is an important part

10:09

of understanding Holocaust perpetration. And on

10:12

the other side was the, of

10:14

course, the popular history blitzed, but

10:16

I think that music also provides

10:19

some insight into that, is into

10:21

the social history of troops, into...

10:23

what they were able what troops

10:26

were able to do in their

10:28

free time to also have some

10:30

sort of respite or release from

10:32

genocide. But the the shocking thing

10:35

that I found was the substantial

10:37

use of musical sadism, not only

10:39

music as a form of entertainment

10:42

for the troops, but actually as

10:44

a way of enacting genocide is

10:46

a way I in chapter. three,

10:49

I write it as analogous to

10:51

menstrual street, right? So like the

10:53

black menstrual street tropes in the

10:55

United States, that there's these tropes

10:58

of Jews on the eastern front.

11:00

One of them is the Jews

11:02

are in something inherently musical or

11:05

that they dance and they sing

11:07

and that you see these tropes

11:09

enacted at the moment of violence.

11:12

And then you also see these

11:14

tropes institutionalized into the concentration camp

11:16

system. And so there's a there's

11:18

tremendous scholarship particularly in the post-colonial

11:21

literature about music and violence so

11:23

people like Suzanne Cusick have written

11:25

about music and violence Jay Martin

11:28

Daughtry writes about the bellophonic sounds

11:30

of war in his landmark book

11:32

on the Iraq war and Anna

11:35

Maria Ocho Gautier who's a fellow

11:37

Columbia professor she writes substantially about

11:39

understanding of diversified archive and hearing

11:41

the different perspectives of scenes and

11:44

so on, via music, via sound,

11:46

and also what we understand to

11:48

be human vocality. So understanding scenes

11:51

through the human voice. And so

11:53

I would say that the sound

11:55

studies literature was also very influential

11:58

to me, particularly writing the chapters

12:00

on the violence of the Ainsa

12:02

Scupa in the East and in

12:04

understanding. Treblinka. And that situates the

12:07

violence of the Third Reich within

12:09

other acts of colonial violence. So

12:11

that's a whole separate conversation, but

12:14

those are kind of the two

12:16

big fields, the social camaraderie of

12:18

troops, and then also music and

12:21

sound studies in relation to violence

12:23

or colonial violence. What is your

12:25

book's contribution to the ethno music

12:28

hology of the Holocaust? Oh, I

12:30

don't know that I write terribly

12:32

about ethno musicology. I find ethnology

12:34

as a historian to be a

12:37

difficult and narrow field, which is,

12:39

which often requires us to define

12:41

what we mean by ethnic, and

12:44

that for me is where the

12:46

problem lies in that I have

12:48

a problem distinguishing Jewish music or

12:51

Roman music in this case as

12:53

being different from Western European art

12:55

music or somehow being ethno musicology

12:57

versus just simply musicology. And I

13:00

find that that. ethnicization, I guess,

13:02

further ghettoizes the Jewish community and

13:04

the Roma community in the European

13:07

context, and it separates, for example,

13:09

Roma folklore from the use of

13:11

Roma music and pieces like Raval

13:14

Zegahan or Sarasatti Zegainavazan, that in

13:16

other words, Roma musicology, if it's

13:18

written, rewritten and reimagined by a

13:20

European composer, but Roma music as

13:23

it exists. is relegated to the

13:25

realm of ethnomusicology. So that's why

13:27

I don't, I don't engage too

13:30

much with their literature as a

13:32

base. What does your research teach

13:34

us about their relationships between ethics

13:37

and aesthetics? Oh, I hope a

13:39

lot. I hope that that's what

13:41

we're, I hope that that's where

13:43

I'm really contributing to things. And

13:46

I mean, we have a, we

13:48

have a pretty sizable body of

13:50

literature on this and especially in

13:53

the German speaking world, all the

13:55

way from, I mean, in the

13:57

American context, sorry, American scholarship writing

14:00

about the third right. And, but

14:02

there is this question right of

14:04

aesthetics ending with the third right,

14:06

where that the cultivated Germany, the

14:09

cultivated imperial Germany has a culmination

14:11

in national socialism. And I think

14:13

that that is something, I think

14:16

that that argument oversimplifies it in

14:18

that. cultivated people, so-called, can also

14:20

commit genocide, right? And it's not

14:23

an either-or dialectic. So it's not

14:25

this, well, people are either civilized

14:27

or they're somehow barbaric, somehow removed

14:29

from the world. I think that

14:32

we as thinking individuals and as

14:34

humanistic thinkers, we would like to

14:36

think of ourselves removed from the

14:39

genocidal process or removed from the

14:41

genocidal ability. And I think that

14:43

the truth is that it's actually

14:46

a little bit closer than all

14:48

of us would like to acknowledge.

14:50

And so what we see, and

14:53

I think that the example of

14:55

court Franz, for example, that I

14:57

give in the Treblinka chapter is

14:59

a fantastic example of somebody who

15:02

was obsessed with classical music, wanted

15:04

to be a violinist, was a

15:06

very cultivated individual, right? He was

15:09

he was a very young man.

15:11

He was in his late 20s,

15:13

early 30s. when he was working,

15:16

as it were, at Treblinka. And

15:18

he was fascinated by classical music

15:20

and by art and by a

15:22

very certain cultivated Teutonic myth, even

15:25

of serving as a soldier. And

15:27

he wanted to prove himself as

15:29

much aesthetically as he did as

15:32

a soldier. So we see this

15:34

kind of young man trying to

15:36

prove. his brutality alongside his aesthetic

15:39

commitment to the Reich. And this

15:41

man, this manifested in some very

15:43

disturbing ways in Treblinka, like he

15:45

insisted on having his own band

15:48

with Arthur Gold, the great Warsaw

15:50

Viola. performing. He insisted on having

15:52

his own aesthetic strictures in the

15:55

camp. He would stage fights between

15:57

prisoners. He would stage erotic examples

15:59

of Judaism, so like plays about

16:02

the Maccabees and things like this

16:04

about parodic redemption, because he was

16:06

he saw that his aesthetic commitments

16:08

were part of his service as

16:11

a soldier. or as part of

16:13

the SS. And so it's, aesthetics

16:15

and ethics are deeply entangled for

16:18

national socialism and also coming out

16:20

of it, right? So we see,

16:22

we see this trying to be

16:25

unpacked by people like Herbert Boncaria

16:27

and in the post-war period. How

16:29

does your research shed new light

16:31

on the Treblinka camp? Yeah, so

16:34

Treblinka is a very difficult situation

16:36

because Treblinka was completely destroyed by

16:38

first the German, well first actually

16:41

the revolt a Treblinka destroyed a

16:43

huge section of the camp and

16:45

this was close to the end,

16:48

the closure and liquidation of the

16:50

camp anyways. And so the Germans

16:52

actually blew up for example the

16:54

crematoria when they were trying to

16:57

leave. Most of the, as far

16:59

as we can tell, most of

17:01

the bodies at Treblinka were burned

17:04

in massive immolation pits since they

17:06

tried to cover a lot of

17:08

this. And then the Soviets destroyed

17:11

a lot of what was left

17:13

and they put up this very

17:15

brutalistic memorial in the immediate post-war

17:18

period. But there's not a lot

17:20

of surviving physical camp structures and

17:22

things like this. So it's hard

17:24

to imagine the space of the

17:27

camp. And one of the things

17:29

that I uncovered is that sound

17:31

is a very lingering memory, and

17:34

it's a very durable memory when

17:36

you look at post or testimony.

17:38

So, whereas something like site is

17:41

not, right? So if you ask

17:43

somebody 10 years on to remember

17:45

exactly a detail of their mother's

17:47

face. for example, this is much

17:50

more difficult, but somebody 10, 15

17:52

years on will immediately recognize the

17:54

sound of their mother's voice. So

17:57

sound is a very, very powerful

17:59

connection to memory. And so what

18:01

I was able to do is

18:04

looking through both written post-war memory

18:06

and also, so people like Vasily

18:08

Grossman, who are some of the

18:10

first people to write about the

18:13

camp with the Red Army. Rachel

18:15

Auerbach, people who wrote immediate post-war

18:17

impressions of the space, but also

18:20

people like Yankiel Vernik and Hill

18:22

Reichmann, who were both in the

18:24

camp, they left substantial testimony, both

18:27

written and video testimony, and they

18:29

were in the case of Reichmann,

18:31

like architects or initial, and Vernik

18:33

as well, were initial architects of

18:36

the camp, like they were compelled

18:38

to build the camp. So what

18:40

we see from this is that

18:43

sound is a way to envision

18:45

the camp. It's a way to

18:47

understand that there were two sides

18:50

to it, that the music, for

18:52

example, I mean, even just practical

18:54

things that music could not, for

18:56

example, have covered screens coming from

18:59

gas chambers. This was impossible. There

19:01

was pervasive violent sound. I coined

19:03

a new... term for this pervasive

19:06

violent sound. It's called gesarmt ges,

19:08

gesarmt gee bateticlahn, so like a

19:10

totalizing violent sound, of excavators digging,

19:13

of crackling immolation pits, just this

19:15

all the time. No amount of

19:17

musical, a small band would have

19:19

covered this. So there's sound that

19:22

gives us some practical insight into

19:24

that. And it also helps us

19:26

understand the social functions of what

19:29

was going on in the camp,

19:31

so how people actually experience this

19:33

because we don't have that many

19:36

survivors. So we have to extrapolate

19:38

from what we do have to

19:40

understand people's kind of sensational experiences

19:43

of the space. Dear old work

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19:47

Actually, it is you. Endless onboarding,

19:49

constant IT bottlenecks? We've had enough.

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We need a platform that just

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gets. And to be honest, we've

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met someone new. They're called Monday.com.

19:59

And it was love at first

20:01

onboarding. They're beautiful dashboards. They're customizable

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workflows that is floating on a

20:06

digital cloud nine. So no hard

20:08

feelings, but we're moving on Monday.com.

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The first work platform, you'll love

20:12

to use. What was the Treblinka

20:15

song? So there's a, there's two

20:17

as far as I can tell.

20:19

there was one which was sung

20:22

during deportations at the Omshad Platz.

20:24

So in Warsaw, there were people

20:26

singing something called Treblinka Sauer, Treblinsky

20:29

Dork, you also hear. And this

20:31

is not the Treblinka song that

20:33

I have in the book. So

20:35

what most people are referring to,

20:38

and they say, and then we

20:40

sung the Treblinka song, they're referring

20:42

to this song that was sung

20:45

at the deportation point in Warsaw,

20:47

which talks about Treblinka as this

20:49

unknown place of destruction. There was

20:52

a Treblinka song which was in

20:54

the camp, which was compelled to

20:56

be written by a Czech Jew

20:58

by Kurt Franz personally, and it's

21:01

basically like I also talk about

21:03

the Buchanva lead later in the

21:05

song, it's pledging a sort of

21:08

fidelity, like a sort of almost

21:10

collegiate brotherhood to the camp, that

21:12

you have to serve in the

21:15

camp, and this would have been

21:17

something compelled by prisoners to have

21:19

been sung with gusto, with all

21:21

sorts of coordinated gestures, like taking

21:24

off their caps or drumming on

21:26

their legs and sort of things

21:28

like this, both at roll call,

21:31

whenever Kurt Franz would approach a

21:33

pro to prisoner who knew this,

21:35

he might compel them to sing

21:38

it. It was a sort of

21:40

like erotic version of almost a

21:42

collegiate song that was constantly parroted

21:44

in the camp and compelled in

21:47

the camp. Can you explain the

21:49

term sonic brutality? Sure. So this

21:51

is borrowed from the literature of

21:54

people like Suzanne Cusick and Jean

21:56

Martin Dottry who write about sonic

21:58

violence. So the use of things

22:01

like loudspeakers. overwhelming violence used for

22:03

example in Pinochet's chili of sound.

22:05

And so I think that you find

22:07

this as well and you

22:09

find this in Treblinka. Of

22:11

course there's other instances of

22:14

this within the Holocaust. So

22:16

at the Operation Harvest Festival

22:18

at Midonic they they played

22:20

loudspeakers for hours, supposedly to

22:23

cover the mass shootings. But

22:25

what we didn't realize is

22:27

that these loudspeakers were also

22:29

used, I believe, also at

22:31

the beginning of Operation Harvest

22:33

Festival, but also in other

22:35

concentration camp systems, to play

22:37

nursery rhymes to so-called placate

22:40

children when they were going to

22:42

be mass executing families. And so

22:44

you see this, it's very parodic,

22:47

it's overwhelming sound. It's something which

22:49

is not to the benefit of

22:51

those being tortured, sonically

22:54

tortured, murdered. It's to the

22:56

benefit of perpetrators. It's often

22:58

for the entertainment of perpetrators,

23:01

and it's a type of

23:03

musical sadism, which they're using

23:06

to heighten terror and heighten

23:08

violence. How does your study

23:10

shed new lights on everyday

23:12

life in Nazi concentration camps?

23:15

I think that it's... I mean, thank

23:17

God, I think that it's almost

23:19

impossible for us to

23:21

imagine what life would

23:23

be like for even

23:25

one day in any

23:27

of the Nazi concentration

23:29

camps. I think particularly

23:32

for the big five

23:34

Reinhard camps, Auschwitz-Beknam-IDonik, Treblinka,

23:36

Sobibor, and Beljets. The

23:39

day-to-day survival was so

23:41

increasingly impossible that it

23:43

was... it was just complete, also

23:45

sensory overload and terror moment by

23:47

moment and day by day. And

23:49

I, in doing the scholarship,

23:52

it's almost unimaginable to

23:54

think about how people were able to survive

23:56

for a year or two. So like in

23:58

the case of Yankiyov... in the case

24:00

that there was this pervasive smell

24:03

of death and decay, and it

24:05

was overwhelming, which is extraordinary, like

24:08

that he was able to withstand

24:10

this. Terrence Duprey, a scholar who

24:12

writes about Auschwitz, talks about the

24:15

so-called experimental assault of being in

24:17

the camp, that there was this

24:19

pervasive smell of death and decay,

24:22

and it was overwhelming and it

24:24

seeped into your clothes and that

24:27

you couldn't shake it for years.

24:29

And so I was trying to

24:31

come up with a similar term

24:34

for sound because we've all we've

24:36

had this experience all of us

24:38

in a nonviolent context you can

24:41

imagine if somebody is shouting or

24:43

you hear a concert even and

24:46

it's too loud for your ears

24:48

you kind of have that ringing

24:50

for your ears you kind of

24:53

have that ringing for your ears

24:55

you kind of have that ringing

24:57

for a couple of days you

25:00

kind of have that ringing for

25:02

a nonviolent context so there is

25:04

a sonic template for this and

25:07

I was curious what that would

25:09

be like to hear an excavator

25:12

digging mass grave. for months on

25:14

end to hear giant emulation pits

25:16

crackling for months on end. And

25:19

so, again, I have this term,

25:21

Gassam Gershamkibaltaticlang, which is this totalizing

25:23

violent sound, which is meant to

25:26

capture what Terrence DePres says about

25:28

the excremental assault of the camp,

25:31

the sensorial experience in the sonic

25:33

sense. You explained the term musical,

25:35

too. Sure. So I was very,

25:38

I was shocked in a very,

25:40

like a humorous and parodic way

25:42

to see how this still, this

25:45

trope still persists today. So when

25:47

I was, I was an Auschwitz

25:50

Jewish fellow in 2016, I was

25:52

walking with this fantastic cohort of

25:54

mine and Krakov. And we found

25:57

these little statues of Jews, and

25:59

a lot of them were holding

26:01

like a one euro coin, or

26:04

you know, they're about the size,

26:06

they're about two inches tall or

26:08

so, like six, six centimeters, and

26:11

they'd be holding like a little

26:13

one euro coin, or they'd be

26:16

holding a little Taras girl. and

26:18

they're very like stereotypical images of

26:20

Jews, right? Long payas, over exaggerated

26:23

facial features, like again, very similar

26:25

to like a menstrual trope, but

26:27

in the Jewish context. And so

26:30

they would have like an over

26:32

exaggerated long nose or a very

26:35

kind of simplistic expression on their

26:37

face. They were almost all men.

26:39

I saw very few, if zero

26:42

women representations. And the other thing,

26:44

other than holding coins that I

26:46

noticed them holding, were musical instruments.

26:49

And this was really pervasive. So

26:51

when you would see anti-Semitic art,

26:54

even from the inter-war period, even

26:56

in Nazi Germany, not in rice

26:58

commissary at Ukraine or in the

27:01

general government of Poland, but within

27:03

Germany, they would start painting Jews

27:05

as like. playing a clarinet or

27:08

playing music or dancing as part

27:10

of this kind of essentialized racialized

27:13

image of a Jew. And what's

27:15

interesting is that you then see

27:17

this trope play out is this

27:20

very nasty racialized trope of simplistic

27:22

dancing, singing, musical, playing Jews, and

27:24

that they are some group of

27:27

people who are just simplistically dancing

27:29

to their death, basically. And you

27:31

see this play out in the

27:34

eastern front, where the Ainsa School

27:36

of Italians start requesting musical instruments

27:39

for Jews to play in the

27:41

same category as gendered violence, like

27:43

cutting off beards and, you know,

27:46

and ritualize violence like burning Torah

27:48

scrolls and burning safaram and things

27:50

like this. They're also compelling music,

27:53

typically from male choralities, some male

27:55

groups. There it's typically grown men.

27:58

It's not like little boys. It's

28:00

not. pre-barments for age kids. And

28:02

they're doing this up to the

28:05

moment of mass shooting. So right

28:07

up until the edge of pits,

28:09

Germans are making Jews sing and

28:12

dance and entertain them. And you

28:14

see this also in the Polish

28:17

context. There's a fantastic article. I

28:19

cited about compelled dance and Jews.

28:21

So there's this kind of trope

28:24

of musical or simplistic dancing, singing

28:26

Judaism, which is then mapped on

28:28

to sonic and dancing violence, I

28:31

guess. So like compelled musical sadism

28:33

would be the best way of

28:35

saying that. Can you elaborate on

28:38

the term, musical sadism? What does

28:40

it specifically mean and refer to?

28:43

So I think the best and

28:45

most shocking example I had from

28:47

the testimony was this man who

28:50

is kneeling at the edge of

28:52

a pet, so he knows he's

28:54

going to be shot. And before

28:57

he shot, they're making him repeatedly

28:59

sing the communist international over and

29:02

over. And instead of singing the

29:04

communist international in Russian, which would

29:06

make some sort of sense, right,

29:09

given that it's this, like supposedly

29:11

the international anthem of communist workers

29:13

and socialist labors and so on.

29:16

or French, the original language that

29:18

it was written in, they're making

29:21

this man sing in either Yiddish

29:23

or Hebrew. They told him, singing

29:25

Yiddish or Hebrew before your shot.

29:28

So there's this compelled additional, like

29:30

he's already going to be shot,

29:32

but there's this additional psychological torture

29:35

that's being inflicted with music. There's

29:37

testimony that's taken actually from Christopher

29:39

Brownings work on the 101st Police

29:42

Battalion about this hated Officer Bechmaa.

29:44

who is making a man, an

29:47

elderly man, crawl through the dirt.

29:49

So he gets his clothing, his

29:51

very traditional clothing, completely covered in

29:54

mud. He gets mud in his

29:56

beard. And at the same time

29:58

that he's making him do this,

30:01

he's singing. So he's saying you

30:03

have to sing as you're crawling

30:06

through the mud, and you have

30:08

to sing something jolly and religious.

30:10

So it's always this erotic intention

30:13

before we shoot you. And then

30:15

the second case, you know, sing

30:17

a jolly Jewish song, whatever this

30:20

means. And then in the in

30:22

this case of this hated officer

30:25

Bechmaia, he literally shot this old

30:27

man directly in the mouth. So

30:29

you see this, the conflation of

30:32

actualized violence of mass murder with

30:34

literally taking this person's voice away

30:36

at the same time. So there's

30:39

this very close relationship between sonic

30:41

violence and then when actualized violence

30:43

occurs. That's very dangerous and it

30:46

seems extremely pervasive in the testimonies.

30:48

You write as follows on page

30:51

1111. The soundscape of Treblinka is

30:53

also worth careful consideration. With the

30:55

complete destruction of the camp and

30:58

limited photographic and archaeological evidence of

31:00

the site, sound from testimony helps

31:02

reconstruct the experience of the camp

31:05

and the spatial interactions with prisoners.

31:07

There are repeated emphasis on prisoners.

31:10

progressing from the arrival platforms through

31:12

the forest, the disorientation of the

31:14

tube, hymnostrasa, the divide between the

31:17

two camps between life and the

31:19

hell of the gas chambers, is

31:21

mentioned in nearly every testimony. This

31:24

disorientation was sonically reinforced from other

31:26

sensorial interactions like the combination of

31:29

the sandy arrival. platform, and screaming

31:31

chaotic, unhuman guards to the twisting

31:33

path through an unnervingly quiet forest

31:36

while approaching a small orchestra playing.

31:38

Survivors made a clear delineation between

31:40

Treblinka 1 and Treblinka 2, a

31:43

hell from which nobody returned, filled

31:45

with death, and parodic spectacles of

31:47

degradation, combined with... final last gaps

31:50

at salvation or humanity from victims.

31:52

This sonic... landscape of the camp

31:55

is mentioned even in testimonies without

31:57

a musical or sonic focus and

31:59

from wharfizing the enormous excavator, removing

32:02

human elements from violence and unimaginable

32:04

perpetrator voices, and using sounds like

32:06

the arrival blasts to mark the

32:09

train to mark the day. The

32:11

examples of sound that are striking

32:14

in testimony are revealing in several

32:16

ways. First, the guessamptu-alt tatiklang is

32:18

not only the sound of screaming

32:21

or death or gunshots, but a

32:23

subtle reconsideration of sounds that are

32:25

not inherently violent. The crackle of

32:28

a fire, the tenor of an

32:30

engine, the blast of a train

32:33

horn, or even the jovial dance

32:35

of an orchestra, sound can become

32:37

violent in context. The ominous crackle

32:40

of a fire-burning bones and families

32:42

rather than wood, or the cheerful

32:44

party music of the interwar merging

32:47

with screams from diesel gas chambers

32:49

watched enthusiastically by the SS, the

32:51

demarcation of time also. as indicated

32:54

sonically with train blasts, for example,

32:56

snaps prisoners back to the reality

32:59

of their horrifying tasks and to

33:01

and the endless tortures of their

33:03

time in the camp. Can you

33:06

elaborate on this for us? I

33:08

think there's a couple important things.

33:10

So this idea of Gassam to

33:13

give outtaiti clang or total violent

33:15

sound is unpacked a little bit

33:18

more here. So when we think

33:20

of violent sound, we often think

33:22

of sound which is somehow inherently

33:25

violent, right? So like a gunshot

33:27

or screams of pain or torture.

33:29

These would be things that we

33:32

associate immediately with violence. But something

33:34

like a crackling fire we often

33:37

associate with home and hearth, right?

33:39

We think of like, oh, a

33:41

cozy fire at home. But what

33:44

of this sound that you're hearing

33:46

every day is crackling, not because

33:48

it's burning wood in a fireplace

33:51

in your home, but it's endless

33:53

crackling of bones and you know

33:55

that it's immolation pets and you

33:58

know that it's this, this sound

34:00

then takes a new meaning. Similarly,

34:03

we hear digging all the time.

34:05

Heck, in New York City, we

34:07

hear endless construction. But I don't

34:10

ever associate it with anything violent.

34:12

I just think it's new construction,

34:14

new scaffolding going up. But in

34:17

the case of Treblinka, the excavator

34:19

digging constantly is again digging these

34:22

mass pits for emulation or it's

34:24

transferring dirt onto the ones that

34:26

have already burnt. So this diesel

34:29

excavator, people talk about in the

34:31

testimony, is like having a voice

34:33

as barking, is working alongside the

34:36

perpetrators, as having a voice similar

34:38

to that of the of the

34:41

perpetrating command. Even dogs barking I

34:43

wouldn't say is inherently unfriendly, but

34:45

when these dogs have been set

34:48

on to prisoners, when they're trained

34:50

to attack prisoners, then they take

34:52

a new violent sound. And the

34:55

other important thing is the soundscape

34:57

and understanding the camp through sound.

35:00

So it's hard for us to

35:02

imagine, again, the layout of the

35:04

camp and the experience of the

35:07

camp because of... First of all,

35:09

the limited survivor testimony and the

35:11

complete destruction of the of the

35:14

site. But if you visit, you

35:16

notice that like where the arrival

35:18

platform is is this weird strange

35:21

sand that would be disorienting, right?

35:23

You arrive somewhere, you don't know

35:26

where you are. It's literally the

35:28

end of a train line. The

35:30

train would have to stop here.

35:33

The only way is for the

35:35

train to go in reverse, right?

35:37

So people get off, they're disoriented

35:40

from traveling all the way from

35:42

Warsaw. they're in this sand which

35:45

is very disorienting to kind of

35:47

be fumbling around in the forest.

35:49

They people describe the arrival as

35:52

unhuman guards, as screams like pigs

35:54

or like dogs, that they didn't

35:56

even sound like they were speaking

35:59

a language. And you see piles

36:01

of clothes that people described as

36:04

being as three stories high, the

36:06

size of buildings. This is extremely

36:08

concerning, right, but that the voices,

36:11

the pig-like voices of perpetrators are

36:13

driving you forward of the experience

36:15

of running down. And again, it's

36:18

a lot of connections to sound,

36:20

right, that it's the voice of

36:22

perpetrators of perpetrators. It's the... the

36:25

experience, the sensorial experience, of running

36:27

down this so-called tube, which is,

36:30

which the Germans called hemostwasa, or

36:32

road to heaven. And so they're

36:34

running down this road to heaven,

36:37

which ultimately ended up in the

36:39

gas chambers. And there were many

36:41

gas chambers of Treblinka, mostly smaller

36:44

buildings. They were all powered not

36:46

by cyclone B gas, as they

36:49

were at Auschwitz, but instead by

36:51

diesel, actually from Metzadez engines. which

36:53

were back fed into gas chambers.

36:56

So they took a really really

36:58

long time to run, like upwards

37:00

of 30 minutes, so people would

37:03

be standing out in the cold.

37:05

The guards at the point of

37:08

the gas chambers were mostly Ukrainian.

37:10

They were extremely humored by the

37:12

people waiting for the gas chambers.

37:15

And so they would also see

37:17

this as a sort of like

37:19

musical sadism. So what we have

37:22

in the testimony is we have

37:24

those people's experience waiting for gas

37:26

chambers. They don't understand what they're

37:29

looking at as buildings. The diesel

37:31

hum is very concerning. They can

37:34

start to hear screams. The orchestra

37:36

itself that's this little band, it's

37:38

Arthur Gold and a clarinetist and

37:41

possibly a singer. It's just a

37:43

little band of three people, but

37:45

they're playing like interwar kind of

37:48

jazzy standards, like little schmeltzy interwar

37:50

standards. And that has to be

37:53

very disorienting and very alarming to

37:55

see this three group of starved

37:57

prisoners just playing their hearts out

38:00

to people freezing in the cold.

38:02

It's very strange and satirical. And

38:04

so through sound we can understand

38:07

the sight a little bit better

38:09

and what people's experience. were like

38:12

in the camp. There's another quote

38:14

I'd be curious to ask you

38:16

but on page 105 you write

38:19

as follows. Treblinka is a particularly

38:21

destructive horror in Jewish memory and

38:23

the perspective of Soviet liberators. Opened

38:26

on Tshaba of 1942 it was

38:28

the destruction of the Jewish people

38:30

in the 20th century equivalent to

38:33

the historic destruction and mourning of

38:35

the first and second temples. Prisoners

38:38

were even able to mark time

38:40

in Treblinka as the Jewish holidays

38:42

always had, the largest transports. Vasily

38:45

Grosman deliberately envisioned Treblinka as the

38:47

greatest hell on earth, compared to

38:49

which Don Tays' Inferno was a

38:52

harmless satanic frolic. Survivor Phil Reichman

38:54

echoed the demonic language referring to

38:57

Treblinka to the death camp where

38:59

the death camp where the gas

39:01

chambers were located as the devil's

39:04

factory, and one particularly culpable Ukrainian

39:06

mechanic responsible for putting gas in

39:08

the gas in the gas chambers

39:11

as Ivan the devil, a saddest

39:13

who liked what he did. A

39:16

Nazi assault on Jewish states and

39:18

increased sadism and murder was intended

39:20

to parody the Hebrew god and

39:23

possibly of and possibility of Jewish

39:25

redemption. Rachel Auerbach recalled that the

39:27

enemy wanted to destroy us spiritually

39:30

as well as mentally a spiritual

39:32

humiliation. Children on Simcha Torah mostly

39:34

boys carried younger siblings into the

39:37

gas chambers at Auschwitz, a parody

39:39

of men carrying children to see

39:42

the Torah on the same holiday,

39:44

and were told to sing by

39:46

the Sonder commando to at least

39:49

not reveal fright or... on a

39:51

tremendous psychological... terror of their murder

39:53

to the guards. These selections on

39:56

holidays were common, where Jewish holidays

39:58

brought special fear to the selection

40:01

of young boys for extermination at

40:03

Auschwitz and Maidanek. In Treblinka, one

40:05

of the largest transports arrived and

40:08

coincided with a large selection of

40:10

existing prisoners on air of Jom

40:12

Kippur in 1942. Sadism and mocking

40:15

ritual was a potent entertainment for

40:17

the perpetrators. As Passover 1943 approached,

40:20

prisoners were given flour to bake

40:22

Matsot and a small bottle of

40:24

wine. The Passover meal was to

40:27

be prepared for the SS to

40:29

come as guests and led by

40:31

a cantor from Warsaw. The SS

40:34

laughed for a few minutes before

40:36

leaving, remarking that Matsod was baked,

40:38

as 10,000 Jews simultaneously burned. The

40:41

parallel and parody is clear. where

40:43

the Jews had been passed over

40:46

by the spirit of death in

40:48

Egypt, commemorated in a holiday 3,256

40:50

years later, death was ever pleasant

40:53

in Treblinka and the miracle of

40:55

exodus and next year in Jerusalem

40:57

was to be delivered by SS

41:00

perpetrators through the machinations of the

41:02

Holocaust. This is on page 105.

41:05

Can you say more about this

41:07

for us? Sure. So the we

41:09

know from the trial of Adolf

41:12

Eichmann in 1961 that one of

41:14

the charges that was specifically levied

41:16

at Eichmann was the destruction of

41:19

the Jews of Europe and the

41:21

culture of the Jews of Europe

41:24

and that a lot of the

41:26

testimony given in this section of

41:28

the trial was specifically about religious

41:31

destruction and cultural destruction. So this

41:33

was something that was linked to

41:35

the Holocaust and yet a distinctly

41:38

separate and horrific category. We see...

41:40

on in the early phases of

41:42

the Holocaust and the Ains of

41:45

Sklupa, we see this parody use

41:47

of religion, like to make people

41:50

sing, to dance, to burn Farram,

41:52

to burn Taras. We see this,

41:54

of course, in the early days,

41:57

in the rise of national socialism

41:59

within Germany and Austria, of like

42:01

Jews being forced to shave their

42:04

beards, to scrub cob cobblestones, to

42:06

do all sorts of things particularly

42:09

on religious days. We know that

42:11

Treblinka was specifically opened on Tishabeyav

42:13

in 1942 at the directions of

42:16

Adolf Eichmann. So Adolf Eichmann wanted

42:18

this to be the final destruction

42:20

of the Jewish people, which is

42:23

why Treblinka was opened on Tishabev.

42:25

What we see in this is

42:28

true throughout the concentration camp nexus,

42:30

is the clandestine violence which occurred

42:32

on Jewish holidays. in the shootings

42:35

in the East, for example, that

42:37

clandestine violence is then institutionalized in

42:39

the concentration camp system. So I

42:42

think that the testimony from Auschwitz

42:44

is particularly horrific, where the selections

42:47

of young Jewish boys would happen,

42:49

for example, on some katara, and

42:51

they were told, carry your boy,

42:54

carry your younger brother, carry your

42:56

younger sister into the gas chambers

42:58

as though you're carrying the Tara.

43:01

and that we know that the

43:03

gas chambers were very inefficient on

43:05

children alone. So without adults standing

43:08

next to them, and so often

43:10

they would have to run the

43:13

gas chambers multiple times, it was

43:15

extremely horrific for the children who

43:17

were involved. And we know that

43:20

the largest selections within concentration camp

43:22

systems, including Treblinka, took place on

43:24

like Arab Yom Kippur, on Arab

43:27

Pesa. And this was to increase

43:29

the terror of the camp. I

43:32

think that the thing about Matsa

43:34

is absolutely fascinating in Treblinka, where

43:36

they specifically gave an allotment of

43:39

flour, they said to bake Matsa,

43:41

they had this erotic sater. Earlier

43:43

in the chapter, I also talked

43:46

about they did a parody of

43:48

the play of the Maccabees, and

43:51

this presumably would have been around

43:53

Hanaka. And so they did things

43:55

like this to just parody the

43:58

Jewish faith. It wasn't that they

44:00

were saying, oh, where is your

44:02

God now? And where is your

44:05

redemption from your God? it's instead

44:07

there is none of your God

44:09

there is no God of the

44:12

of the Hebrews of the Israelites

44:14

and your redemption is only through

44:17

the fires of national socialism so

44:19

that was the ultimate conclusion of

44:21

this religious violence by the third

44:24

right is that the redemption so-called

44:26

of Jewish people was through the

44:28

gas chambers through the fire of

44:31

national socialism to burn the so-called

44:33

scourge of Jews from Europe and

44:36

so this was this was something

44:38

where People became on high alert.

44:40

By the end of the war,

44:43

they knew that religious holidays were

44:45

particularly dangerous. Of course, then the

44:47

Warsaw Ghetto is also right, the

44:50

Warsaw U which is this week

44:52

is immediately after Pesa, right? So

44:55

we have. We have a lot

44:57

of the important events of the

44:59

Holocaust that are actually linked to

45:02

Jewish religious holidays. If we think

45:04

about even the timeline of Treblinka,

45:06

such Treblinka's open in late August,

45:09

1942, and then that immediately precedes

45:11

the Jewish holidays to the fall,

45:13

right? So if you look at

45:16

the deportations from Warsaw, and from

45:18

Vilna as well, they're mostly coinciding

45:21

with the Jewish holidays in the

45:23

fall. What new insights are percentage

45:25

in your work regarding the Ainsets

45:28

group in? So the study of

45:30

the Holocaust in the East and

45:32

the crimes of the Einseskupa have

45:35

really been expanded upon, especially since

45:37

the opening of the Soviet archives

45:40

in the early in the early

45:42

thousands. Of course, we've seen a

45:44

contraction in that area since, especially

45:47

since 2022. But fantastic organizations like

45:49

Jajanunam have been doing research on

45:51

the so-called Holocaust by bullets and

45:54

collecting huge amounts of testimony. What

45:56

we see is we see this

45:59

level of personal. violence, a lot

46:01

of local collaboration and local help

46:03

with the violence in the East.

46:05

And because the violence is so

46:07

personalized, we also see personal

46:10

enactments of this musical sadism,

46:12

right? So single perpetrators, single

46:15

bullets, single victim. And so

46:17

individual perpetrators are also having

46:19

to mediate that violence. It's not

46:21

as easy as saying, well, I'm not

46:23

the one putting... pellets in the gas

46:26

chamber, so therefore I'm not responsible for

46:28

the genocide. I just run roll call

46:30

in the mornings, right? In the concentration

46:32

camp system, it was easier for perpetrators

46:35

to remove themselves from the nexus of

46:37

violence. But in the in the case of

46:39

the Eins of school, but it's individualized shooters.

46:41

And so I think that in that case

46:43

when we're looking at mediation of

46:45

troops, it's important to see what

46:47

they're doing in a social function,

46:49

what does their camaraderie look like,

46:51

and how does this extend from what

46:53

we know about the workings of the

46:56

Vermacht in the West. So that's what

46:58

Ed Westerman's book does fantastically with alcohol,

47:00

and I'm hoping to contribute to that

47:03

with music, right, looking at the social

47:05

function of troops in the East.

47:07

There's another what I'd be curious to

47:09

ask you about on pages 74 and

47:11

75. You are as follows. Nearly

47:13

300 kilometers away in

47:15

Motel-Billerus Jews were not

47:18

given the opportunity to

47:20

return to the ghetto to

47:22

celebrate the murders of their

47:24

loved ones. Rather, as groups

47:27

of 10 people were shot in

47:29

the field, Jews were waiting their

47:31

turn were ordered to sing a

47:33

Jewish song together. The

47:36

Germans murdered 1,400 men

47:38

accompanied for hours by

47:40

their own. victims in this

47:42

scene, women and children silently

47:44

watched the murders of

47:46

the husbands, brothers and fathers

47:48

of their community as well

47:51

as the religious advisors and

47:53

rabbis, rather than creating a

47:56

stereotypical image of joyful Jewish

47:58

music, this for singing fails

48:00

as a lament, but rather encourage

48:03

the shooters. I'm luckily the victim's

48:05

grief and terror. Jewish music for

48:07

mourning includes lament, but the musical

48:09

selection was made by the perpetrator,

48:12

not the victims. The song, the

48:14

bystander recalled, was a joyous dance,

48:16

but the music in this macabre

48:18

setting. takes on a parodic interpretation

48:21

of a dance for the condemned.

48:23

Clearly the musical selection of height

48:25

also heightened the sadism and entertainment

48:27

value for perpetrators making a parodic

48:30

mockery of a Jewish song while

48:32

compelling a joyous musical reaction from

48:34

victims to their murder. The collective

48:36

group of Jewish men accompanied the

48:39

individuals being shot. Sonically this created

48:41

three groups. The silent Jewish women.

48:43

the singing group of Jewish men

48:46

anticipating their own murder, and the

48:48

individuals being executed. The men were

48:50

murdered as a collective. In groups

48:52

of ten, with the bystander specifically

48:55

recalling that the Jews, that only

48:57

the Jews singing were those waiting.

48:59

The agency of individual voice was

49:01

removed. The uniqueness of the individual

49:04

voice only served the perpetrators in

49:06

further defining a... collective subaltering identity.

49:08

The within watching, horrified, were expected

49:10

to remain silent and also keep

49:13

terrified children silent. The silence of

49:15

women and children here shows men

49:17

as the primary target of sadism

49:19

and humiliation. The only specific memory

49:22

of the men's voices in this

49:24

bystander testimony was in the musical

49:26

violence. Can you say more about

49:28

this for us? immediately follows a

49:31

similar scene which happened in Rockeven,

49:33

Belarus, where after the Jews were

49:35

shot, anybody who served from this

49:37

immediate selection of Jews was brought

49:40

back to the village and told

49:42

to celebrate, so to like sing

49:44

and dance and create a giant

49:46

party, and they had left, for

49:49

example, the rabbi alive to lead

49:51

this party in Rakov. In Malta,

49:53

in Belarus, what we see is

49:55

this very strange scene, which we

49:58

can assume played out in other

50:00

places, but again, we have limited

50:02

testimony. This is extraordinary bystander testimony.

50:04

You would have terrified women and

50:07

children, right? So the wives, the

50:09

daughters of the men being killed,

50:11

are standing for hours on end.

50:13

This was probably eight, nine, ten,

50:16

even sixteen, seventeen hours, standing out

50:18

while the men, first of all,

50:20

would have had to dig the

50:22

mass grave. then they're standing with

50:25

their terrified children. They don't know

50:27

if they're going to be shot.

50:29

They don't know who's being shot

50:31

today. There's the overwhelming sound of

50:34

some machine gunfire, right, which is

50:36

terrifying in and of itself. And

50:38

then they're forcing this group of

50:40

Jewish men again to sing for

50:43

like eight, 10, 12 hours. And

50:45

what's also interesting, like on a

50:47

sonic level, is that this larger

50:49

collective of men would have then

50:52

been broken down into groups of

50:54

10, so the 10 who are

50:56

being shot in any given time

50:58

are not being compelled to sing.

51:01

Their brothers, their rabbis, whatever this

51:03

might be, are accompanying their own

51:05

murder. And that group of singing

51:07

Jews then is slowly silenced, right?

51:10

So you see this cultural silencing

51:12

along with the literal silencing and

51:14

mass murder. And as this very

51:16

alarming, like why do this, right?

51:19

Like what's the purpose? It's obviously

51:21

not to cover sound. It's not

51:23

to cover the sound of shots.

51:25

It's not to placate the children.

51:28

If anything, it would have like

51:30

terrified the women and children more

51:32

who are watching this, right? Clearly

51:34

terrified and made it sadistic for

51:37

the men more. I mean, we

51:39

can imagine somebody singing, for example,

51:41

the Kolkjor service, right? Like they're

51:43

singing for eight. hours, but they're

51:46

not standing and waiting awaiting their

51:48

own execution, right? This is difficult

51:50

in any situation to sing for

51:53

this amount of time is my

51:55

point, much less waiting under those

51:57

conditions of violence. So it's something

51:59

for entertainment of the perpetrators. It's

52:02

an additional and a final torture.

52:04

It creates uncertainty for the women

52:06

and children and the additional men

52:08

who are standing there. They don't

52:11

know when the Germans are going

52:13

to tire of this particular game.

52:15

And so we have a better

52:17

understanding of the horror of the

52:20

scene, as if mass shootings in

52:22

the East weren't horrific enough. What

52:24

new insights are presented in your

52:26

study regarding the material culture of

52:29

the Holocaust? I think they contribute

52:31

to some of the recent work.

52:33

I'm thinking of Hannah Wilson's study

52:35

of materiality and Selby Bor. We're

52:38

trying to understand, particularly in the

52:40

case of the Glavoxne Camps of

52:42

Beljot Selby Bor and Treblinka, what

52:44

was really going on, what these

52:47

camps looked like, how they were

52:49

experienced, and I think that mine

52:51

helps understand Treblinka and the layout

52:53

of Treblinka. I think that soundscapes.

52:56

derived from testimony. So really sitting

52:58

down and just reading all of

53:00

the things about sound and the

53:02

testimony can be really helpful component

53:05

to add to things like mapping

53:07

and topographical work on the Holocaust,

53:09

particularly of these destroyed sites. I

53:11

think also from a material culture

53:14

perspective there's the the troop song

53:16

aspect and thinking about military material

53:18

what was valuable what were people

53:20

carrying at the very end so

53:23

like to send song books with

53:25

a bunch of. troops, not just

53:27

like a commanding officer, but to

53:29

send songbooks with text, not just

53:32

not musical notation both text to

53:34

a bunch of troops, speaks to

53:36

the value of music, the importance

53:38

of culture to the third right,

53:41

which filtered down to the vermacht.

53:43

What I think is also interesting

53:45

is that the material culture around

53:47

the command at the end, so

53:50

that like records and like you're

53:52

thinking about Hitler going into the

53:54

bunker at the very end of

53:56

the war. He's taking his albums

53:59

with him, right? If you think

54:01

about Hitler's trains at the end

54:03

of the war, they all are

54:05

fully stocked with classical music albums,

54:08

garing at the very end of

54:10

the war when he fleets to

54:12

Karen Hall, he's he evacuates his

54:14

records and his drinking glasses and

54:17

his Porsche, right? So there's this

54:19

material culture insights into the command,

54:21

which I think are also fascinating

54:23

because it reveals their priorities until

54:26

the end of the end of

54:28

the war. What was your guiding

54:30

principle in conducting this research? I

54:32

think my, it's like the dedication

54:35

of the book, it's to the

54:37

countless victims of the Holocaust to

54:39

whom I may tell a piece

54:41

of their story. And I think

54:44

that that's what I'm hoping to

54:46

do is try to tell a

54:48

part of a lost story to

54:50

give voice to people who entire

54:53

families and communicated communities which were

54:55

eradicated. and tell a piece of

54:57

that, tell a piece of their

54:59

experience and provide insight to how

55:02

they may have suffered. I also

55:04

think that as a musician it's

55:06

part of my obligation to look

55:09

critically at classical music, to look

55:11

critically at our legacies, not only

55:13

in this like larger post-colonial conversation

55:15

about the dominance of Western art

55:18

music. but to look at the

55:20

dominance of Western art music within

55:22

the West, within Europe, and say

55:24

what stories are being left out,

55:27

and why, whose voices are missing

55:29

from the classical canon, and why,

55:31

and how can we think critically

55:33

about specifically Roma and Jewish inclusion

55:36

in the classical canon in the

55:38

wake of the Holocaust? How does

55:40

your research at New Light on

55:42

the psychology and perpetration of humiliation?

55:45

quite a bit. I didn't get

55:47

too much into the psychological literature

55:49

on perpetration just because I find

55:51

it very difficult to read. I

55:54

find it difficult to engage with

55:56

how and why people perpetrate violence.

55:58

But I I think that this

56:00

musical component links to larger issues

56:03

of like perpetuating tropes, tropes humiliation

56:05

and ritual violence kind of all

56:07

go hand in hand. And then

56:09

I think that this links back

56:12

to these larger questions of dehumanizing

56:14

tropes and creating edifices of people

56:16

or images of people right we

56:18

talk about the image. in the

56:21

image with a big eye as

56:23

it relates to mass violence. And

56:25

it's true because you're not seeing

56:27

people as people. You're saying people

56:30

as a super human entity. And

56:32

then it's humiliation of that entity.

56:34

It's breaking down that identity. I

56:36

think the other thing that's really

56:39

critical is to look at the

56:41

creation of perpetrator identity because inherent

56:43

to. the creation of a dominant

56:45

or perpetrator identity is the creation

56:48

of a subaltern identity, right? So

56:50

we talk about this in all

56:52

sorts of colonial, post-colonial situations, but

56:54

to create a hegemonic, you have

56:57

to create a subaltern. And so

56:59

in understanding what the national socialist

57:01

conception of German or the final

57:03

German, Phine-Germani, is you have to

57:06

also understand what what they're trying

57:08

to eradicate, what they're trying to

57:10

eradicate from their culture. And so

57:12

that sort of ideological conception of

57:15

national socialism of them as the

57:17

third right, the third empire, as

57:19

a legacy, going back to the

57:21

Teutonic period, is what led them

57:24

to create such a strong and

57:26

clear subaltern identity to be eradicated

57:28

within Europe. And so that's why...

57:30

It's it becomes more clear than

57:33

to look at Jewish victimization, Roma

57:35

victimization, anti-Slavicism as all these contributing

57:37

factors to the health. What new

57:39

research directions would you like to

57:42

see readers if your book undertake?

57:44

Can you suggest some questions that

57:46

might make for interesting term papers,

57:48

academic articles, or monographs? I would

57:51

love to see people, especially Roma

57:53

Scholars, emerging Roma Scholars, look more

57:55

at... the intentional destruction of roma

57:57

music, of the oral histories in

58:00

the roma community, the oral musical

58:02

traditions. I think that this is

58:04

something which is greatly lost. I

58:06

think it's something that taps into

58:09

larger historical questions. So the great

58:11

Haitian historian Michel Rochial writes about

58:13

the silenced archive, the silenced past.

58:15

And I think that this is

58:18

really true when you're looking at

58:20

oral traditions and communities which have

58:22

largely passed their culture in the

58:25

oral tradition like the sentient Roma

58:27

of Europe, and what reassertion in

58:29

their classical sense in their traditional

58:31

sense might look like. And I

58:34

would also like to see somebody.

58:36

possibly myself more definitively link music

58:38

to these other, I call them

58:40

psychologically modifying elements, so drugs and

58:43

alcohol, right? So to look at,

58:45

are there parties where alcohol is

58:47

being consumed after mass shootings, that

58:49

there's also musical instruments being played,

58:52

and the answer is yes, we

58:54

have some fantastic photos from my

58:56

own research from Edwesterman's work, even

58:58

from Blitz. So you see the

59:01

conflation of all of these kind

59:03

of psychologically modifying aspects at once.

59:05

I think that this would be

59:07

a really fantastic exploration of study.

59:10

And I would love to see

59:12

some sonic reconstruct reconstructions of some

59:14

other sites. So I'd love to

59:16

see somebody look at the Sobibor,

59:19

especially Belzetz. I would love to

59:21

see some detailed articles on how

59:23

we can understand sites like Bogdanovka.

59:25

So Bogdanovka was a mass shooting

59:28

in the Transnisterin region of Ukraine,

59:30

of occupied Ukraine. And Bogdanovka, for

59:32

example, went on for almost two

59:34

weeks. So it was in the

59:37

winter of 1941, and the Germans

59:39

took a nice little break for

59:41

themselves for Christmas for mass shootings.

59:43

But I think sound could provide

59:46

some really important insight into sites

59:48

like that, where we might even

59:50

have some testimony about partying or

59:52

Nazi, you know, identity formation, parting

59:55

with Ukrainians, whatever that might be,

59:57

in the so-called breaks from genocidal

59:59

action. So I think that there's

1:00:01

some fruitful sites, or sound could

1:00:04

also be illuminating. And I would

1:00:06

also like people looking farther east

1:00:08

so I myself have a study

1:00:10

upcoming where I apply similar paradigm

1:00:13

still looking at the blockade of

1:00:15

Leningrad. So that's a forthcoming chapter

1:00:17

in my newest book because I

1:00:19

think again sound is really illuminating

1:00:22

to understanding sites where. either we

1:00:24

have limited survivorship or where the

1:00:26

experience of being in these sites

1:00:28

was so totalizing and overwhelming as

1:00:31

was the case with Leningrad and

1:00:33

the content the constant sound of

1:00:35

bombardments and mastath and all these

1:00:37

other things that sound helps us

1:00:40

reconstruct where people's day-to-day experiences were

1:00:42

like. On pages 134 and 135

1:00:44

you write as follows. Some of

1:00:46

the leisure and military activities of

1:00:49

the SS also remained even during

1:00:51

collapse. Survivor Christina S describes the

1:00:53

end of the marches in late

1:00:55

spring 1945, where the Nazi guards

1:00:58

still wanted to hunt animals, a

1:01:00

deer in the forest for fun.

1:01:02

She was clear that they didn't

1:01:04

need the meat, they probably tried

1:01:07

to live up. To Hitler's ideals

1:01:09

or something. She also recalls the

1:01:11

same group of soldiers drinking and

1:01:13

hunting bores for fun and camaraderie.

1:01:16

They wanted some fun and hunting

1:01:18

in 1945. just as Goring shot

1:01:20

his favorite bison at Karen Hall

1:01:22

and packed his drinking glasses, so

1:01:25

had masculine ideals of hunting and

1:01:27

alcohol filtered to the SS as

1:01:29

essential bonding activities. In April 1945,

1:01:32

guards at the Noyangama concentration camp

1:01:34

continued partying and drinking heavily at

1:01:36

night having or cheese with female

1:01:38

German auxiliaries. German auxiliaries, German auxiliaries.

1:01:41

and sang martial and SS songs.

1:01:43

Can you say more about this?

1:01:45

So what I find interesting is

1:01:47

that this is, so late spring

1:01:50

of 45, so we're talking the

1:01:52

German army and the SS are

1:01:54

in total retreat. They're all the

1:01:56

way into the borders of what

1:01:59

is, you know, modern Germany today.

1:02:01

They are, it's very clear that

1:02:03

the war is over. It's very,

1:02:05

very clear that they are losing.

1:02:08

And like I referenced Garing here,

1:02:10

I referenced him in the previous

1:02:12

chapter, there's this really durable commitment

1:02:14

to the Teutonic ideals and the

1:02:17

camaraderie of what was established in

1:02:19

the interwar period. So it's like,

1:02:21

let's drink and let's go hunting

1:02:23

and let's listen to music and.

1:02:26

what you don't see and what

1:02:28

I was expecting to find in

1:02:30

the, especially the retreat of the

1:02:32

SS, less so the final days

1:02:35

of the command, but certainly the

1:02:37

retreat of the SS, is I

1:02:39

would think that assets and retreat

1:02:41

would start freaking out about retribution

1:02:44

for the Holocaust, right? They would

1:02:46

think that when they were approached

1:02:48

by Allied troops, be it Soviets,

1:02:50

Americans, British, whatever it might be,

1:02:53

that they would be held responsible.

1:02:55

for this group of beleaguered people

1:02:57

they're walking with, right? They would

1:02:59

be held responsible for working at

1:03:02

Noyangama or Buchanbad or Beggenbelsen or

1:03:04

whatever, and that they would not,

1:03:06

they would want to distance themselves

1:03:08

from that, right? And so I

1:03:11

thought I would see SS guards

1:03:13

putting on prisoner uniforms or pretending

1:03:15

to blend in with the prisoners

1:03:17

and not. until the bitter end.

1:03:20

They didn't do this at all.

1:03:22

You see the SS barely even

1:03:24

willing to take the the death

1:03:26

cap insignia off of their caps

1:03:29

or barely willing to cover up

1:03:31

SS tattoos that they have. The

1:03:33

identity is durable until the bitter

1:03:35

end, until May 9th of 45.

1:03:38

They are very happy to... leave

1:03:40

the group of death marchers that

1:03:42

they're walking with from concentration camps

1:03:44

to like go hunt with their

1:03:47

friends for half an hour or

1:03:49

several hours. They're very happy to

1:03:51

go play drinking games with their

1:03:53

friends in the final days of

1:03:56

Noyangama or Bagnbelsen. And they also

1:03:58

continue this sort of parodic violence

1:04:00

and musical violence also on death

1:04:02

marches and also up until the

1:04:05

bitter end. And this was something

1:04:07

I did not expect to find

1:04:09

so durable, particularly in the ranks

1:04:11

of the ordinary soldier, or I

1:04:14

guess in this case, the conscripted

1:04:16

SS. What insights are presented in

1:04:18

this study regarding Jewish holidays as

1:04:20

experienced in concentration camps? A lot

1:04:23

of the initial literature that we

1:04:25

had on Jewish holidays and the

1:04:27

Holocaust come from DP camp. So

1:04:29

we have some really heartfelt postcards,

1:04:32

for example, from like Suqot. Even

1:04:34

from Roshoshana, like in 45, so

1:04:36

people buy the end of 45,

1:04:38

so liberation is April and May,

1:04:41

right? And then from DP camps,

1:04:43

we see people starting to write

1:04:45

letters. send postcards and even holiday

1:04:48

cards, like for Sukhot, for Rushahana,

1:04:50

Leso, for Yom Kippur, in 45.

1:04:52

And what this leads to is

1:04:54

this kind of, there's a very

1:04:57

touching image, for example, a Buchanbal,

1:04:59

being celebrated, Hanaka being celebrated in

1:05:01

Buchanbal, like in the, what was

1:05:03

the DP camp after Buchanbal. So

1:05:06

what this leads to is this

1:05:08

perhaps erroneous sense of maintenance of

1:05:10

Jewish religious life within the camps.

1:05:12

There are of course extraordinary stories.

1:05:15

So there is a number of

1:05:17

prominent rabbis I can think about

1:05:19

who they were told. On Yom

1:05:21

Kippur, they were from the meager

1:05:24

rations in the concentration camp system,

1:05:26

they were given increased rations, specifically

1:05:28

on Yom Kippur. Often the food

1:05:30

was had something like pork added

1:05:33

to it, and a lot of

1:05:35

people ate it and then immediately

1:05:37

became sick or died because it

1:05:39

was too, the caloric overload was

1:05:42

too substantial. And so there's a

1:05:44

number of prominent rabbis who have

1:05:46

said, oh, I declined food even

1:05:48

on Yomkipur, even in the camps,

1:05:51

I was able to fast. And

1:05:53

so there is this kind of

1:05:55

erroneous or even apocryphal understanding of

1:05:57

keeping holidays in the camps for

1:06:00

the people were somehow able to

1:06:02

do so. And I don't think

1:06:04

that that was generally the case,

1:06:06

right? I mean, I think generally

1:06:09

the holidays were particularly dangerous, especially

1:06:11

from after Vanses, after 1942, until

1:06:13

the end of the end of

1:06:15

the war. What you see is

1:06:18

that the holidays become these very

1:06:20

dangerous upticks for violence in the

1:06:22

ghettos in the concentration camp system.

1:06:24

And yeah, it's something where it

1:06:27

would not really been possible to

1:06:29

celebrate in the way that a

1:06:31

lot of people would like to

1:06:33

hold on to as an element

1:06:36

of Jewish resistance. Let's put it

1:06:38

that way. For the extent that

1:06:40

you feel comfortable sharing. Were there

1:06:42

any aspects of this research that

1:06:45

you needed to exclude from the

1:06:47

published version of this book due

1:06:49

to time in space constraints? Can

1:06:51

you tell us what any apocryphal

1:06:54

content that you feel appropriate to

1:06:56

disclose? So I actually didn't have

1:06:58

to limit anything out of the

1:07:00

book, which was fortunate. I did

1:07:03

for myself have to take time,

1:07:05

particularly working on the Treblinka chapter,

1:07:07

where it was a lot of

1:07:09

like... This many people were killed

1:07:12

this day and this is the

1:07:14

sound of crackling and pets, and

1:07:16

I was like, this is enough

1:07:18

for me for today. Like, I'm

1:07:21

gonna take a break. I'm not

1:07:23

gonna work on this anymore. It

1:07:25

is incredibly violent material to work

1:07:27

with. The testimony is extremely violent.

1:07:30

And at the risk of sounding

1:07:32

fragile of people, you know, having

1:07:34

lived through actual genocide, and I'm

1:07:36

like too fragile to deal with

1:07:39

it for a few hours, it

1:07:41

is trying testimony to work with

1:07:43

for months on end or weeks

1:07:45

on end. There are a number

1:07:48

of the sources particularly those from

1:07:50

the Fortune of archive are anonymized

1:07:52

with only first name and last

1:07:55

initial. That's just kind of standard

1:07:57

archival practice. It's based on the

1:07:59

family's sensibilities and how much they're

1:08:01

willing to share. That's also a

1:08:04

relatively private archive and that you

1:08:06

need researcher access to access those

1:08:08

testimonies. Whereas the University of Southern

1:08:10

California Showa Foundation, testimonies those are

1:08:13

much more public and so a

1:08:15

lot of the. the documentation as

1:08:17

much were readily available. I didn't

1:08:19

feel the need to exclude any

1:08:22

images. The only thing I excluded

1:08:24

for practical concerns is there are

1:08:26

no musical scores in the book.

1:08:28

So I don't want this to

1:08:31

be a musicological read where people

1:08:33

have to have a knowledge of

1:08:35

classical music or music in general

1:08:37

to understand what's being said, but

1:08:40

rather to be using music and

1:08:42

looking at music as a historical

1:08:44

document and for historical insights into

1:08:46

scenes. So I tried not to

1:08:49

read anything which was beyond what

1:08:51

was actually in the text to

1:08:53

read something that's mythological or affective

1:08:55

on to textual reads, on to

1:08:58

musical experiences in the camps in

1:09:00

the camps in violent situations, just

1:09:02

to present what they were and

1:09:04

how sound might have contributed to

1:09:07

the situation. Not say it made

1:09:09

somebody feel this way, this is

1:09:11

a working through of trauma, this

1:09:13

is to read something additional onto

1:09:16

it. In other words, what findings

1:09:18

discovery surprised you most in your

1:09:20

research process? I think some of

1:09:22

the, again, how durable that SS

1:09:25

identity was until the end. That

1:09:27

was shocking, like, just no fear

1:09:29

of retribution, no fear of allied

1:09:31

retribution, just like, yeah, we're walking

1:09:34

with death camp prisoners, this is

1:09:36

completely fine, I'm gonna keep my

1:09:38

SS hat on until the end.

1:09:40

I mean, really, very little concern

1:09:43

of retribution from the allies or

1:09:45

from the prisoners themselves. I was

1:09:47

expecting that SS identity to be

1:09:49

a lot less durable. I also

1:09:52

think that the command, which I

1:09:54

mean I know that they are

1:09:56

were very very strange individuals to

1:09:58

say police, but just the crazy

1:10:01

antics of like Hitler and the

1:10:03

command until the bitter end. It

1:10:05

was just very strange. Like somebody

1:10:07

staging a concert of Berlin Philharmonic

1:10:10

and like on April 30th of

1:10:12

1945, this is just bizarre to

1:10:14

the highest extent or garing, going

1:10:16

and shooting a bison and then

1:10:19

putting a swastika of pearls in

1:10:21

the staggier or stag antlers and

1:10:23

driving around in his Porsche with

1:10:25

his records. I mean, he antics

1:10:28

of these people until the end.

1:10:30

It's just bizarre. And I also

1:10:32

wasn't on the on the victim

1:10:34

side of it. I wasn't expecting

1:10:37

to find the use of musical

1:10:39

sadism as widespread as I did.

1:10:41

That was an unfortunate finding to

1:10:43

see how entertaining the Holocaust was

1:10:46

for perpetrators and how they were

1:10:48

able to really, I guess, enthusiastically

1:10:50

engage with perpetration throughout the entire

1:10:52

war. I think that was a

1:10:55

very disappointing finding. Is there anyone

1:10:57

who was helpful to you? during

1:10:59

the journey that went into this

1:11:01

book that you would like to

1:11:04

think publicly or exactly. So first

1:11:06

of all, the four archivists, the

1:11:08

four archivists are librarians at the

1:11:11

United States Holocaust Museum, Livieu, Megan,

1:11:13

Elliot, and Vincent are some of

1:11:15

the most tremendous people, scholars, librarians

1:11:17

in the world. If anybody has

1:11:20

the pleasure of working at the

1:11:22

United States Holocaust Museum, they are,

1:11:24

they have encyclopedic knowledge. they are

1:11:26

so generous with their time towards

1:11:29

scholars, be it setting up a

1:11:31

microfilm machine or finding an obscure

1:11:33

source, they have such complete knowledge

1:11:35

of that archive and are such

1:11:38

an incredible pleasure to work with.

1:11:40

I received some great funding from

1:11:42

the Wilson Center, which allowed me

1:11:44

to complete the book from Yad

1:11:47

Vashem along the way. And I

1:11:49

was, of course, a fellow at

1:11:51

the United States Holocaust Museum where

1:11:53

I started working on the initial

1:11:56

research for the project. So I'm

1:11:58

very grateful for all of the

1:12:00

funding. I'm very grateful to my

1:12:02

two members of my doctoral committee,

1:12:05

Adrian Edgar, who was my principal

1:12:07

advisor, who really said, yes, this

1:12:09

is great material, start publishing. I'm

1:12:11

so happy for you that this

1:12:14

is. you know under contract and

1:12:16

it sounds like some great chapters

1:12:18

you have. Also to Harold Marcuse

1:12:20

who was a member of my

1:12:23

committee is a tremendous German historian

1:12:25

tremendous historian of Dachau and who

1:12:27

read early drafts of the chapter

1:12:29

commented on some of the German

1:12:32

translation that I was doing. So

1:12:34

very appreciative for him throughout in

1:12:36

addition to my dissertation both of

1:12:38

them were also commenting on my

1:12:41

dissertation at the same time so

1:12:43

to be reading to dissertation like

1:12:45

the projects I really appreciate. And

1:12:47

then. Going all the way back

1:12:50

to my violin, DMA, Sabina Feist,

1:12:52

who is a tremendous musicologist, tremendous,

1:12:54

especially of exiled music and of

1:12:56

Arnold Shernberg, my goodness words, but

1:12:59

she is a, she's just a

1:13:01

phenomenal musicologist and when I was

1:13:03

a violinist and saying, just primarily

1:13:05

a violinist, I was saying, hey,

1:13:08

I want to do some more

1:13:10

research, I want to do things

1:13:12

like that, both my advisor for

1:13:14

violin, Katie McClen, Katie. And Sabina

1:13:17

Fice were both extremely encouraging about

1:13:19

here's programs you can apply for,

1:13:21

here's ways to do research, both

1:13:23

of them wrote my initial letters

1:13:26

for the fellowship that I got

1:13:28

at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. As

1:13:30

far as I know, I was

1:13:32

the first performer to hold that

1:13:35

postdoc, so I really appreciate their

1:13:37

encouragement in doing that. And last

1:13:39

but certainly not least to my...

1:13:41

my three fantastic children who've been

1:13:44

patient through the entire process and

1:13:46

to my to my mom who's

1:13:48

been encouraging and listen to endless

1:13:50

rants on the phone about hey

1:13:53

you know does this concept make

1:13:55

sense and also I'm thinking about

1:13:57

doing yet another degree and how

1:13:59

do you feel about that and

1:14:02

she's just been incredibly supportive throughout

1:14:04

the whole process for which I'm

1:14:06

very very grateful. As we end

1:14:08

today's dialogue can you kindly tell

1:14:11

us for where your time and

1:14:13

attention have gone since completing this

1:14:15

work? Yeah, so I'm really excited

1:14:18

as you had asked me about

1:14:20

future projects for myself and for

1:14:22

others to be working on a

1:14:24

comparative study now of Nazi and

1:14:27

Soviet atrocity. It's entitled Sonic Shatter

1:14:29

Zones the intertwined spaces sounds and

1:14:31

music of Nazi and Soviet atrocity.

1:14:33

And I'm now accompanying every chapter

1:14:36

of that book with things that

1:14:38

you can actually hear. So it's

1:14:40

gonna have eight CDs. It's all

1:14:42

sorts of recovered music that I've

1:14:45

worked with, and it really. drops

1:14:47

us into some of these soundscapes

1:14:49

that I began investigating here. It

1:14:51

drops us in and allows us

1:14:54

to listen to soundscapes of the

1:14:56

Gulag and recovered music from the

1:14:58

Holocaust and recovered music from the

1:15:00

Gulag, of course accompanied with a

1:15:03

fantastic academic text. So I've been

1:15:05

thrilled to be making those recordings

1:15:07

this year. I just got back

1:15:09

from making another one over the

1:15:12

past weekend. I was recording Shustikovitch

1:15:14

Trio. And so I'm hoping that

1:15:16

now in addition to exploring soundscapes.

1:15:18

and the sounds of traumatic violence,

1:15:21

as it were, how depressing that

1:15:23

sounds, you'll actually be able to

1:15:25

hear some of these soundscapes and

1:15:27

interact with perhaps remote sites of

1:15:30

atrocity with which we might not

1:15:32

be able to visit. So that's

1:15:34

my current work, and I'm very

1:15:36

excited for people to be able

1:15:39

to start hearing that next year.

1:15:41

As we end today, I'd like

1:15:43

to express how thankful I am

1:15:45

for all your erudition, sensitivity and

1:15:48

magnanimity throughout the course of our

1:15:50

dialogue today. I can hardly thank

1:15:52

you enough. Yeah, thank you so

1:15:54

much. Thanks for having me on.

1:15:57

As we end today, I'm signing

1:15:59

off as our... Barbolette, your host,

1:16:01

on the New Books in Jewish Studies channel

1:16:03

of the New Books Network podcast.

1:16:06

Today, I have an honor to

1:16:08

engage in a dialogue with Alexandra

1:16:10

Birch. She is a melon teaching fellow

1:16:12

at the Herriman Institute and

1:16:14

lecturer in history at Columbia

1:16:16

University. You've been discussing her

1:16:19

newly published book, Hitler's Twilight

1:16:21

of the Gods, Music, and

1:16:23

the Orchestration of War and

1:16:26

Genocide, in Europe. published in

1:16:28

Toronto by University of Toronto

1:16:30

Press 2025. Thank you. Thank you so

1:16:32

much. Six

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