The Role of Music During the Holocaust

This deeply moving and powerful lecture-recital delves into the extraordinary and often haunting role of music during the Holocaust, examining repertoire banned by the SS Kulturkammer and what type of music was performed in the camps and ghettos. Through the heartbreaking stories of Jewish composers whose lives were extinguished by the Nazi regime, Dr. Beard exposes how the Nazis twisted music into a weapon of psychological cruelty, even as prisoners reclaimed it as a lifeline. In the darkest of circumstances, music became a fragile sanctuary: an act of courage, identity, and resistance against a world intent on erasing them.

This Humanities Iowa program is free and open to the public.