Tigermedia - A Prisoner’s Voice: Poetry of Psychological Resistance
A Prisoner’s Voice: Poetry of Psychological Resistance
Date: April 21st, 2021
Duration:
59m:53s
This performance took place on April 21, 2021 and was part of the 2020-21 KHC/NEH Colloquium entitled “Internment & Resistance: Confronting Mass Detention and Dehumanization.” This colloquium is aligned with the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center’s original exhibition, "The Concentration Camps: Inside the Nazi System of Incarceration and Genocide": http://khc.qcc.cuny.edu/camps/ and is one of two events about Krystyna Zywulska: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnTBzMmHaRs
“Farewell, Auschwitz” provides a glimpse into prisoner life in one of the darkest chapters of human history, and brings to life the power of music and poetry to bring light to despair. Krystyna Zywulska was a Polish political prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland from 1943 to her escape in 1945. While imprisoned, Zywulska wrote lyrics and set them to familiar folk, classical, and popular tunes from the period, and prisoners performed the resulting songs and shared the words as a means of coping with the horrors of the camp. Before imprisonment, Zywulska had not written a single song; Nazi oppression appears to have inspired her creative blossoming. “Farewell, Auschwitz”: Music by Jake Heggie; text from Zywulska?'s poetry, written at Auschwitz, 1943-1945; Jennifer Gliere, soprano, Roz Woll, mezzo-soprano, Steven Dahlke, baritone, Mirna Lekic, piano.
This event was co-sponsored by the Queensborough Performing Arts Center (QPAC) and presented in partnership with the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center, Cincinnati. For more information about the KHC at Queensborough Community College, please visit http://khc.qcc.cuny.edu