The Soldiers of the Moor (Die Moorsoldaten).Liebster has published an autobiography, Facing the Lion: Memoirs of a Young Girl in Nazi Europe. Eventually both her father (Adolphe Arnold) and mother were arrested and sent to concentration and detention camps while she was placed in a correctional institution for вЂњnonconformistвЂќ youth. After the incorporation of Alsace into the German Reich during World War II, LiebsterвЂ™s family suffered increasing harrassment from the Nazis for following the JehovahвЂ™s Witness faith. Simone Arnold Liebster, who sings the English version of the song, was born in 1930 in Mulhouse, French Alsace. This performance, evoking some of the songвЂ™s original spirit, took place under FrostвЂ™s direction at an event held in Wiesbaden, Germany, during the 1960s. Fest steht, reworked in English as Forward, You Witnesses, is among the most popular of JehovahвЂ™s Witness hymns. Later deported to a labor camp at Alderney, Channel Islands, Frost survived the war and returned to Germany to serve the Watchtower Society. Caught smuggling pamphlets from Switzerland to Germany, he was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin where he composed this song in 1942. This recording features Zipper conducting a male chorus and ensemble of 15 guitars and percussion in a performance marking the fiftieth anniversary of Dachau Lied, given at the Styrian Autumn Festival in Graz, Austria.Д®rich Frost (1900вЂ“1987), a musician and devout JehovahвЂ™s Witness, was active in the religious resistance to HitlerвЂ™s authority. After World War II, Zipper immigrated to the United States, working as a conductor, composer, and music educator until his death at age 92 in 1997. Zipper, ransomed by his family, fled to Paris and then to the Philippines, where he served as conductor of the Manila Symphony. Weeks after composing the song, the two men were transferred to Buchenwald, where Soyfer died from typhoid fever at age 26. According to Zipper, he and his coauthor made Dachau Song deliberately difficult to learn, hoping the challenge would help their comrades rise above their surroundings. Both Soyfer and Zipper believed that exercising the intellect helped preserve a prisonerвЂ™s self-respect in the face of constant humiliation.

Initially performed in secret, Dachau Song was eventually learned by many camp inmates. Soyfer and Zipper wrote Dachau Song in September 1938 as an ironic response to the motto вЂњArbeit Macht FreiвЂќ (Work Makes Freedom) inscribed on the gate at the entrance to the camp.

They met again at Dachau, where both toiled as вЂњhorses,вЂќ hauling cartloads of heavy stone throughout the camp. Playwright Jura Soyfer and composer Herbert Zipper, active in Viennese antifascist cabaret, were arrested by the Gestapo after the German-Austrian Anschluss of 1938. Like вЂњaudio snapshots,вЂќ these works offer a telling glimpse into the events and emotions that their creators and original audiences experienced firsthand. Such music-particularly the topical songs-also serves as a form of historical documentation. These included topical songs inspired by the latest gossip and news, and songs of personal expression that often concerned the loss of family and home.Д¬lassical music-instrumental works, art songs, opera-was also produced and performed during this period, notably by prisoners at the Theresienstadt (TerezГn) ghetto and transit camp in Czechoslovakia, as well as in several other ghettos and camps.ДЇor many victims of Nazi brutality, music was an important means of preserving and asserting their humanity. While popular songs dating from before the war remained attractive as escapist fare, the ghetto, camp, and partisan settings also gave rise to a repertoire of new works. Music was heard in many ghettos, concentration camps, and partisan outposts of Nazi-controlled Europe.

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