Fascinating new light on Poland’s Nazi Philharmonic Orchestra
OrchestrasKrakow never had an orchestra, writes Jolanta Łada- Zielke, until Poland’s Nazi overlord Hans Frank created the Krakow Philharmonic, mostly for the benefit of SS genocidal murderers at the Auschwitz concentration camp nearby.
Jolanta argues that three German conductors of the orchestra were instrumental in saving Polish lives. One was Rudolf Hindemith, brother of the exiled German composer. Another, Hans Rohr (pictured), may have been secretly murdered by the SS for his attempts to create dialogue between Poles and Germans. Jolanta has talked to two surviving musicians.
The brilliant Polish harpist Helena Rostkowska-Smoczny had to move from Warsaw to Kraków. For her family, however, this paid off. Director Rohr brought her brother and stepson out of Auschwitz, and her husband returned from captivity. “But Helena Rostkowska and the other Polish soloists didn’t want their names to appear on posters ,” says Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa. “They didn’t want to be suspected of voluntarily collaborating with the occupying forces, of being the beneficiaries of the regime.”
Read the full article here.
Thank you for bringing this to light. THIS, I consider to be an important bit of history.
and yet, no matter how cultivated, murderers of Jews
And murderers of non Jewish Poles as well. Catholic Poles were treated as an inferior race by the Germans. They were the 1st to be sent to the camps. Polish Catholic clergy were singled out for the most cruel medical experiments by the Gernans. Ethnic Poles & Romani suffered & were murdered alongside Jewish victims, yet this is often overlooked. It is estimated that 2.7 to 3 million non Jewish Polish citizens were killed by Nazi Germany. This was genocide. Many lives besides those of Jews were lost.
“No event in history, cruel as it may have been, compares to the destruction of Europe’s Jews at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators,” Bennett said.
History is rife with calamity, but the Holocaust stands apart in its singular goal of racial extermination, he said.
“Never, in any place or at any time, has one nation acted to destroy another, in a way that was so planned, systematic and cold-hearted, completely due to ideology and without another purpose,” he said.
Israel’s leaders pleaded for an end to political divisions and warned against antisemitic rhetoric or attempts to compare the slaughter of Europe’s Jews to other atrocities, as the nation stopped to memorialize the victims of the Nazi death machine for Holocaust Remembrance Day Wednesday night.
Both Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and President Isaac Herzog focused on a separate single Holocaust incident to evoke the larger, incomprehensible horrors of the Nazi genocide while speaking at Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and museum.
https://neu.org.uk/media/2811/view
ususal party
propoganda and attempt at whitewashing history by PiS
What party? I don’t belong to any party. I’m a genealogist. Thanks to the excellent record keeping of Jewish victims, I learned that my Polish Catholic family members were persecuted & murdered alongside the Jews. I know the stories from my older relatives. My family was not Jewish, we are not antisemitic & we refuse to be blamed & maligned any longer by people like you. Helen. We are not responsible for Hitler’s genocide. We were victims, too.
You’re are correct about the white-washing history. Replacing “German” with “Nazi” and calling Auschwitz “Polish concentration camp are just two examples. However, it’s not PIS that’s doing so.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks” is a line from the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. It is spoken by Queen Gertrude in response to the insincere overacting of a character in the play within a play created by Prince Hamlet to prove his uncle’s guilt in the murder of his father, the King of Denmark.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/non-jewish-victims-of-the-holocaust
Yes, and it puts to bed any notion of cultural or moral superiority for those who love and practice classical music!! The morality of a society moves vertically through the classes and not just horizontally through one.
Absolutely. Hans Frank is perhaps the most perfect example that high cultural erudition has absolutely nothing to do with moral behavior.
On one level I always felt that you could sit down with Frank and have an interesting talk about music. Perhaps Hans Pfitzner would drop in (a Nazi from day one, and an abominable human being in his own right). Or perhaps you could talk to him about chess – Frank was a noted aficionado of the game, organizing several of the most important chess tournaments of the 1940s in Cracow. Participants included world champion Alexander Alekhine (a Russian living in France, and a vile antisemite) and, to their discredit, Paul Keres (a giant player from Estonia) and Gideon Stahlberg (from neutral Sweden).
On the other and more important level, of course you would *not* sit down to have a civilized conversation with one of the most horrible genocidal murderers even by Nazi standards.
For what its worth: at the Nuremberg trial Frank was the only defendent who acknowledged his guilt. A complex monster, but in the end a monster…
May be time to stop obsessing about the Nazis and the second world war.
It’s not an “obsession”, it’s a warning. If you want to move on from that, you need to examine your history more closely, before recalibrating your ethics.
Thank you, Norman. Really fascinating!
Fascinating and horrifying. I sang Klingsor in a concert performance of Parsifal Act II with Gabriel Chmura conducting in 2010, and remember being told that it was the first performance of Wagner in that hall since before WW2. The hall is only a mile or so from the Jewish Ghetto and Oskar Schindler’s factory.
I cannot really believe that being true. There had never been a ban on Wagner’s music in Poland. Especially that in his early years he was a great admirer of the Polish revolutionary spirit and even wrote a piece “Polonia” which would include fragments of the Polish national anthem. So they must have played something by him during the 65 years after the war. Even if it was somethinf small.
From: https://filharmoniakrakow.pl/public/o-nas/historia/
Pierwsze wzmianki o próbach tworzenia profesjonalnej orkiestry symfonicznej w Krakowie pochodzą z końca wieku XVIII. Jednak Orkiestra Symfoniczna – o statusie zawodowego zespołu pod kierownictwem Feliksa Nowowiejskiego – powstała dopiero w 1909 i działała aż do września 1939 roku. W okresie swojego trzydziestoletniego istnienia była agendą Związku Zawodowego Muzyków Polskich w Krakowie, zrzeszając muzyków zawodowych pracujących w różnych lokalach, kawiarniach i w niemych kinach. Związek miał na celu obronę interesów bytowych zrzeszonych muzyków, dbałość o poziom artystyczny ich produkcji oraz propagowanie w społeczeństwie kultury muzycznej poprzez organizowanie koncertów symfonicznych.
W czasie I wojny światowej Związek zawiesił działalność. Po reaktywacji w 1919 roku powstał 80-osobowy zespół, który jako Orkiestra Symfoniczna 18 maja tego roku zainaugurował działalność koncertową występem dla uczczenia 100. rocznicy urodzin Stanisława Moniuszki. W pierwszych latach po reaktywacji zespół koncertował sporadycznie, jednak w kolejnych sezonach liczba koncertów systematycznie wzrastała, zwłaszcza po dotacji Magistratu w początkach lat dwudziestych. Zdarzało się, że w sezonie koncertowym bywało nieraz ponad 20 imprez. W tym okresie orkiestra najczęściej występowała pod batutą takich mistrzów jak: Zdzisław Górzyński, Piotr Stermich-Valcrociata, Bolesław Wallek-Walewski, Adam Dołżycki, Walerian Bierdiajew. W programach figurowały symfonie: Haydna, Beethovena, Berlioza, Brahmsa, Czajkowskiego, uwertury i poematy symfoniczne: Liszta, Karłowicza, Straussa, Debussy’ego i wiele innych utworów symfonicznych. Wykonywano również koncerty instrumentalne, a także dzieła oratoryjne.
W roku 1937 Zarząd Towarzystwa Muzycznego utworzył w swoich ramach samodzielną sekcję o nazwie Filharmonia Krakowska. Po rezygnacji Towarzystwa z tej agendy, inicjatywę przejęło Krakowskie Biuro Koncertowe Eugeniusza Bujańskiego, prowadzące zawodowy impresariat muzyczny i organizujące koncerty na własny rachunek. Zespół pod nazwą Krakowska Orkiestra Symfoniczna koncertował aż do wybuchu II wojny światowej – po raz ostatni 21 V 1939 pod dyrekcją Bronisława Wolfstahla. Wykonano wówczas V Symfonię Beethovena oraz Koncert skrzypcowy E. Młynarskiego wraz z solistką Ireną Dubiską.
Like Czechoslovakia Poland had a German-speaking community. Like the Sudetenland Czechs they were kicked out of their countryor fled the Soviets after WWII.
where did they flee to
Norman, you could have warned us that the article’s continuation is in German.
As the Polish quote mentioned here says – the first professional orchestra was set up in Cracow at least in 1909. But it is worth mentioning that Cracow had much older music ensemble traditions. Already in 1540 Rorantist Capella was set up at Wawel Cathedral, modelled after Capella Sistina choir and singing similar repertoire (including Palestrina, Orlando and also Polish composers). There was also a vocal-instrumental ensemble active there since the beginning of 17th century. You need to remember that Bach’s works were performed in Cracow during his lifetime and some of them actually composed specifically for this city.
There is a huge and very painful problem with the history of Polish music. Some think that (like in Russia) it came from almost nowhere in 19th century. However, not many people realise that between 1655-1660 Poland (which in 16th century was the largest state in Europe and even capable of putting its own tzar in Kremlin), had to suffer “The Swedish Deluge” – the brutal Swedish occupation and devastation of the whole country. Even in Poland most people do not realise that it was more devastating to Polish culture than Russian and German occupation during WW2 (which was still on a scale almost unimaginable in other countries). That is why probably only few musical artifacts survived from before that time. Just listen to choral works like “Już się zmierzcha” by Wacław of Szamotuły from around 1550, or “Tamburetta” by Adam Jarzębski from 1627. It is hard to imagine that these masterpieces came out of nowhere.
The German CD vendor JPC has a three CD set “Polish Baroque” on offer. Quite interesting music by some composer most people have never heard of… Zielinski, Forster, Mielczewski, Usper, Pekiel and others.
Good stuff and long (with photos).
You might wish to stress the linked article is in German.
Nice find, thanks for this.
Thank you for this enlightening article. It highlights the fact that Poland was forcibly occupied by the Germans. Non Jewish Poles were in no way complicit with the Germans, they were also victims. Auschwitz was a German death camp. Non Jewish Poles were among the first to be sent there. The reluctance of the Polish musicians (presumably non Jewish) in this article to have their names appear professionally at Nazi-organized concerts speaks volumes. Poland was occupied. Polish citizens were definitely not complicit.
WWII was another war against the Jews and believe it or not Poles WERE complicit according to history and historians and my family
This is false. It is historically incorrect. WW2 was not uniquely a war against the Jews. WW2 exacerbated the “Nazification” of Germany, but WW2 was not a war exclusively about Jews.
The Nazification of Germany resulted in genocide. Yes, it was a horrific genocide against the Jewish people but it was also directed at ethnic Poles & Romani, both considered to be racially inferior by the Germans. Catholic Poles were viciously targeted. So were Jehovah’s Witnesses, Blacks, Slavs, gays, the disabled & political prisoners from many countries.
To say that Jews were the exclusive victims of Hitler’s genocide is ignorant, frankly. It is estimated that 2.7 – 3 million non-Jewish Poles were murdered by the Nazis. To make the claim that WW2 was “a war against the Jews” is incorrect & offensive to the descendents of the non Jewish Poles who were also exterminated.
Yes, all sides had those who were complicit. There were Jews who collaborated with the Nazis who were known to be the most ruthless of the exterminators. They often served as camp guards & administrators for the Germans. They murdered their own people to save themselves. History is full of these individuals – complicit Jews who collaborated with the Nazis.
Meanwhile, like you, Helen, many are eager to condemn all Poles & their descendents unilaterally for Hitler’s genocide just because they lived in a country which Hitler occupied. Poland was an occupied country. It doesn’t mean that all Poles were complicit. We lost 3 million non Jewish Poles – how is that being complicit?
Please stop pointing a finger & making Hitler’s genocide & all of WW2 only about.you & your family, Helen. It’s disrespectful to the families of non Jewish victims.
My family members also perished in Hitler’s genocide. They were Catholic Poles. They were rounded up along with their Jewish neighbors, with whom they’d lived peacefully for years.
My ancestors were murdered, starved, worked to death in the camps & saw their priests tortured in horrific medical experiments reserved primarily for Catholic clergy.
Please go back to your history books, Helen. Poles were not complicit in Hitler’s genocide.
One cannot whitewash the truth of history.
Nor can you narrate history only to suit your own views.
nor can you or poland and polish people
The Truth About Poland’s Role in the Holocaust
A new law endangers an honest reckoning with a complex past.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/poland-holocaust-death-camps/552455/
Helen, did you even read this article or did you share it simply because the title suits your personal narrative? Read beyond the title, please.
This 2018 law was passed in response to German death camps in Poland being incorrectly called “Polish death camps”. Fact: they were German camps.
The intent of this article is to show that in Poland the line between victims & oppressors is not clear cut. It explains that more Christian Poles have been honored by Israel as Righteous Among Nations for their heroism in saving Jews than citizens of any other country in the world. That seems to be something you’ve forgotten.
The article also gives details about the millions of non Jewish Poles who were sent to German labor camps. 3 million non Jewish Poles were murdered.
While Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Russians invaded her from the east. In 1940, the Soviets ordered the mass execution of 22,000 of Poland’s highest ranking military officers & intelligencia.They hoped to weaken Poland into submission. The bodies were discovered in a mass grave. This was the Katyn Massacre. Neither Germany or Russia would admit responsibility until recently.
Some uneducated Poles in small towns & rural areas after WW2 believed that Jews were allied with the brutal Soviets who were attacking them. This, unfortunately is where the pogroms you’ve mentioned took place. They were tragic but in no way indicate that the entire country of Poland was collaborating with the Germans to kill Jews. German officers, not Poles, actually instigated that violence.
Helen, you’re making a huge generalization about Poland & all Polish people by accusing us all of being anti-semitic. You are glorifying your own status as a victim by blaming other victims. Incomprehensibly, you seem to think that WW2 was all about you & your family.
My family members were also persecuted & murdered by the Germans. Hitler didn’t like my Polish Catholic ancestors any more than he did your Jewish ancestors. And now, you expect me to tell my children that Poland was complicit? Please respect ALL victims of Hitler’s genocide. Thank you.
THE KIELCE POGROM: A BLOOD LIBEL MASSACRE OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS
The term Kielce pogrom refers to a violent massacre of Jews in the southeastern Polish town of Kielce on July 4, 1946.
Actually, German officers started & supervised this pogrom. They ordered poor, uneducated Polish peasants to carry it out.
deal with the truth about polish anti-semitism then and now
more paid PiS propoganda
Helen, to you, propaganda is anything which contradicts your view that Jews were the only victims of Hitler & that all Polish people are anti semitic. That’s simplistic, uneducated & offensive. And it’s dead wrong.
Anon or whatever you choose to call yourself. You may address me as Pani Kamioner
From The New York Times: ENJOY
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019372-polish-cottage-cheese-dip-gzik?searchResultPosition=1
Helen: http://www.brandeis.edu/jewish-experience/history-culture/2023/february/holocaust-jewish-courts.html
typical paid PiS propoganda and denial…don’t forget Jedwabne
Helen, the Jedwabne pogrom took place in 1941 in GERMAN OCCUPIED POLAND. Germany had taken control of Jedwabne & German military officers ordered the pogrom. They ordered the Polish peasants of Jedwabne to carry it out. You are again blaming Poland for the crimes of Germany,
A landmark book that changed the story of Poland’s role in the Holocaust
On July 10, 1941, in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women, and children―all but seven of the town’s Jews. In this shocking and compelling classic of Holocaust history, Jan Gross reveals how Jedwabne’s Jews were murdered not by faceless Nazis but by people who knew them well―their non-Jewish Polish neighbors. A previously untold story of the complicity of non-Germans in the extermination of the Jews, Neighbors shows how people victimized by the Nazis could at the same time victimize their Jewish fellow citizens. In a new preface, Gross reflects on the book’s explosive international impact and the backlash it continues to provoke from right-wing Polish nationalists who still deny their ancestors’ role in the destruction of the Jews.
Thank you Anon!
Another heartwarming example of government funding of the arts being a sign of a civilized country.
The German language article which is attached is fascinating : who knew that Rudolf Hindemith saved some musicians from a Nazi Razzia? This said, you only need to see Krakow to remember that the so called General Gouvernement was beyond appalling and the empty Jewish quarter a testament to their shame.
sad truth. more examples please
The Germans took control of Krakow’s General Gouvernement 1939, correct? Once the Germans occupied Poland, Poles no longer had control of their own government. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-administration-of-poland
NYTIMES, October, 1945
Flight of Few Jews Left Is in View As Polish Anti-Semitism Strikes
Riots Reported Despite Tragedy Imposed by Germans and Government’s Efforts to Crush Bias—American Group Helps
WARSAW, Poland, Oct. 15 (Delayed, via Berlin)—Despite the ghastly fate of the Jews during the war and in the face of the Provisional Government’s earnest efforts to prevent it, anti-Semitism in Poland has been revived to a degree likely to impel the ultimate emigration of most of the few remaining Jews in Poland.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-kielce-pogrom-a-blood-libel-massacre-of-holocaust-survivors
https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/2000926-Poles.pdf
Hans Frank’s love of classical music just proves that this is irrelevant when it comes to moral and ethical behaviour. Hitler loved Bruckner.
If you want to say nice things about Hans Frank, who was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and was sentenced to death and executed by hanging in October 1946 you should first read his son Niklas’s book:
The Father: A Revenge
https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/my-nazi-legacy/
Blaming “poor uneducated Polish peansants” for Kielce and Jedwabne murders is ridiculous, obvious and equally as “uneducated”
https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/music/music-in-the-holocaust.asp
In some camps and killing centers, the Germans formed orchestras from among the prisoners and forced them to play when new prisoners arrived in the camp, as they marched to work, and on their way to the gas chambers. The orchestras also played for the pleasure of German camp personnel. At one point, Auschwitz had six orchestras – the largest of which, in Auschwitz I, consisted of 50 musicians. A women’s orchestra in Auschwitz-Birkenau was made up of 36 members and 8 transcribers under the musical direction of the singer Fania Fénelon. Treblinka, Majdanek, Bełżec, and Sobibór all had orchestras.
Jan Zbigniew Grabowski
10h ·
From time to time I will post fragments from my upcoming book “On Duty. The Role of the Polish Blue and Criminal Police in the Holocaust”, which will be published in English later this year.
“It is hard to say how many “shooting” Polish policemen served in and around the Cracow ghetto but Henryk Piniecki, son of Alfons (the liaison officer in the Cracow police headquarters) was certainly one of them. At the time of the final liquidation of the ghetto, Piniecki was not quite twenty-one years of age and had been on the force for barely a few weeks.
In March 1942 he was transferred from the III Precinct to the guardhouse at Zgoda square whose men controlled access to the ghetto. Karol Gawronski, the commander of the Zgoda guardhouse, in a deposition given a few years after the war, described the sequence of events in following words: “Early in the Spring of 1943, during the liquidation of the [Cracow] ghetto, we received orders to shoot all people trying to leave the area. Officers found in contempt [of that order] were threatened with arrest.
Polish police guarded the ghetto from outside, while the Jewish police kept guard on the inside. I remember that early one morning, while on duty in guardhouse number 2, I heard a shot. When I ran out of the guardhouse, I saw officer Piniecki shooting for the second time to a laying woman from a distance of no more than three meters. The woman tried to bypass the gate and to crawl under the barbed wire. She was with a child of five years, or so.
Piniecki fired off the second shot at the moment when I came out of the guardhouse and all of this happened while I was no more than 10 meters distant. Piniecki wanted to kill the child too, but I ordered him to stand down. Right away, I informed the Jewish police and they took away the child and the body of the woman. Because of all of this, Piniecki got a lot of heat from his fellow-officers” – so concluded his deposition the commander of the ghetto guardhouse. According to Piniecki himself, he learned from other policemen how to shoot the Jews: “The first day of duty, I saw a Jew and a Jewess slip out of the ghetto. A Jewess ran next to me , and I let her pass, the Jew ran towards Nadwislanska street and there he was shot by another officer.
While sergeant Gawronski insisted that “shooting a women laying on the ground was an immoral thing and a disgrace for a policeman,” his superiors held a different opinion. For his vigilance, young Piniecki received “a financial reward and a pair of shoes,” all of which was made public in an internal communiqué published by the Cracow Polish Police headquarters”.