Throughout history, music has played a prominent role in the Jewish culture, whether this be in day to day life as part of their practices, at key celebrations in their religion such as Hannukah and for many a main part of their career. As well as this, music has also been used in times of oppression throughout Jewish history. The Holocaust being one of these times. In fact music has taken on many roles during the Holocaust depending on who it was used by, and these roles ultimately would have effects on the prisoners. By using secondary sources and snippets of first hand accounts, information will be compiled to discover the uses of music and therefore what effect this had. Furthermore this dissertation will draw on the psychological impacts the music had on the prisoners. By doing this, it has shown that when prisoners used music for themselves it boosted their morale and helped to keep their Jewish Identity and heritage alive in times of adversity. However, music was also used by the SS against the prisoners. When this was done, music was a form of torture. This is because the SS used music to dehumanise, demoralise, and destroy the Jewish identity due to anti-Semitic Nazi ideology. These findings are specifically from looking into detail at the camps Auschwitz and Terezin, two very contrasting camps in there purpose, with Auschwitz being a factory of death and Terezin being a ‘model camp’, to distract from the atrocities of the Holocaust. Even when using such contrasting examples the ultimate outcomes of the research were the same, in the ways that music were used.
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