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Conference on music and violence at Auschwitz

“Music, Memory, Violence in Auschwitz-Birkenau” was the title of a conference held at the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust on 26-28 November 2025. The project was organized by the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and the Research Institute for Music Theatre Studies (fimt) of the Bayreuth University in cooperation with Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

Over 60 participants from 6 countries examined how the memory of music and violence in KL Auschwitz functions today. The aim of the meeting was to contribute to reflection, discussion, and more nuanced understanding of music practices in camps in general, and their connection to practices of violence in particular as well as to foster international exchange and intercultural dialogue between Poland and Germany and to actively involve young scholars, to help strengthen the culture of remembrance of the Shoah.

“This conference addresses the connections between music, violence and memory within the context of the German Nazi camps and the Holocaust. For decades, Survivors of Auschwitz shared their memories with the world. Meeting a Survivor was always a profoundly moving experience. But what now, when visitors to Auschwitz have increasingly fewer opportunities to meet Survivors in person? I believe that where the direct presence of a witness can no longer reach us, art may speak instead. Music may speak – as a form of expression that powerfully shapes our emotions and our understanding of the world. It may help us grasp how, in Auschwitz, music could both kill and save; be an escape and a prison; a form of freedom and of oppression,” said Andrzej Kacorzyk, director of the ICEAH during the opening of the conference.

“Given the important place that Auschwitz occupies in our historical memory, the conference organisers felt it was all the more urgent to thoroughly examine the relationship between music and violence. In our view, this controversial connection was neither occasional nor accidental. It was planned and perfidiously exploited by the camp staff. But the use of music to humiliate and torture prisoners – and this happened everywhere where concentration and extermination camps were established – also stemmed from the very nature of art, which, no matter how abstract and devoid of semantics it may seem, has the strongest influence on emotions,” said Prof. Krzysztof Kozłowski from the Institute of Film, Media and Audiovisual Arts at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

“It is well known from the accounts of witnesses who, for the rest of their lives, could no longer listen to this or that composer. It is from this perspective that we wanted to look at all the previously recognised functions of music at KL Auschwitz. We invited eminent researchers from around the world to join us in a discussion on this topic, to reflect on what is not obvious and has not been explored. How cruel it is when what we sincerely love and treat neutrally turns against us and, instead of bringing comfort, only causes pain,” added Prof. Anno Mungen, director of the Institute for Music Theatre Studies (Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater) at University of Bayreuth in Germany.

The programme included presentations by renowned scholars from Poland, USA, UK, France, Spain, and Germany. It addressed among others the following topics:

·       "Music, Ritual and the Framing of Genocide"
·       “Music and Violence in Nazi Camps: Towards a Topographic Approach”
·       “Gaze Control in Son of Saul and The Zone of Interest”
·       "Orchestras and Music in KL Auschwitz from the Perspective of Prisoners and SS men (based on the Accounts and Memories of Survivors)"
·       “Amongst the Ashes of Auschwitz. On Andrzej Brzozowski's Archeology"
·       “Collecting and Embodying Auschwitz Music Repertoire as a Living Archive: The Resonances Project”

The conference participants also visited the historical site of the former Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau camps with the focus on music and its role in the camp reality as well as watched a movie “Lilac/Bez” - a short experimental documentary co-created by WCHC Senior Research and Programming Associate Laura Morowitz. The film follows Laura and two of her daughters, Isabelle and Olivia Schechter, as they travel through Poland, visiting the former shtetls of Chmielnik and Stopnica, where Laura’s grandparents were born.

The organizers plan to publish a post-conference publication with the papers of the speakers in 2026.