A British composer has restored the lost music of Auschwitz (Image: Sky)
A British composer admitted he burst into “tears” after he spotted a rare discovery while filming his new Sky documentary, The Lost Music of Auschwitz.
Ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, composer and researcher Leo Geyer has been restoring and re-composing previously unheard fragments of music that were held in the Auschwitz archive.
Until now, all that was known about the musicians in the concentration camps during was that there were at least six orchestras in Auschwitz, comprised of the prisoners living inside.
In 2015, Leo embarked on a tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial museum in 2015 when he met an archivist who revealed the collection of musical scores written and performed by the inmates.
Prior to his research, little was known about what music they might have played since many of the surviving manuscripts were faded or damaged by the SS.
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Leo Geyer discovered a prisoner had similar handwriting to himself (Image: Sky )
Over the past eight years, the 33-year-old musician has been working to restore some of the lost music from the harrowing camps during the second world war.
Now, Leo has lifted the lid on one of the “rare discoveries” he stumbled across when he uncovered 210 fragments of incomplete and charred musical scores in the barracks.
Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk, he explained: “It was only really when I looked at the unsigned manuscripts at the end of the documentary that my whole perception about the holocaust changed.
“Because by looking at the manuscript, I noticed that my handwriting was the same as this particular prisoner and at the time I didn’t even know who they were.
“To find such striking similarity in handwriting is very unusual because in music writing, the same as when you write words, everyone writes differently. And therefore, to see that connection was very unexpected and sent goosebumps down my spine.”
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He was finally able to credit the mystery musician in the documentary (Image: Sky )
Eventually, Geyer managed to credit the musical composition to Mieczysław Krzyński, the deputy conductor of the Auschwitz I orchestra.
Leo admitted that despite working in the heart of the harrowing camps, he believed he was coping well. But things came crashing down when he returned to the UK after a particually challenging solo trip.
He continued: “The archives themselves are within Auschwitz, so you have to walk under the dreaded gate and I was there for several days.
“I do actually remember coming back from that trip, because I went on that second research and development trip on my own.
“I thought I was coping at the time but then when I got home and first saw my partner I just cried because it’s such astonishingly difficult history to deal with and it doesn’t get any easier. It actually gets worse, because with each time I go, I’m more knowledgeable than I was before.”
The musician was surprised by how upbeat the performaces were (Image: Sky)
The composer went on to reveal how he looked after his mental health when working on the musical restoration by doing it part time over the course of eight years.
Leo recalled: “One of my coping mechanisms is that I’ve been focusing very deliberately on the actual manuscripts and not necessarily having to think too much about the horrors in which this music worked.
“But then when I do go back to Auschwitz, then everything comes back into focus and, well, it’s beyond words really.” It’s fair to say all of his hard work paid off as he restored, composed and performed the muscial score with his fellow musicians from Constella Music.
Established in 1940 as a holding camp for political prisoners in occupied Poland, Auschwitz (the German name for the town of Oświęcim) evolved into the largest and most notorious Nazi concentration camp.
By the time it was liberated on January 27, 1945, more than one million people had been killed. They died in the camp’s gas chambers, in mass executions, as a result of torture and horrifying medical experiments, through exhaustion from forced labour, by starvation and disease, and through random acts of violence committed by the guards.
The first Auschwitz orchestra was formed in January 1941 on the order of the SS, with seven musicians playing on instruments seized from nearby towns.
Initially it performed in the basement of Block 24, a small room which soon became known as the concert hall. On Sundays, the orchestra was made to perform in front of the camp’s commanders. But the orchestra was soon forced to play for prisoners returning from hours of forced labour and for new arrivals being herded to their deaths in the camp’s gas chambers.
The Lost Music of Auschwitz is available on catch up on Sky Arts.