Displaced Music: The Ex-Concentration Camp Orchestra in Postwar Germany

Abstract

On a warm summer afternoon in late May 1945, eight recently liberated Jewish Holocaust survivors gave their first concert on the hospital lawn of Bavaria’s St. Ottilien Monastery. After accepting seven new members, the ensemble soon became known as the Ex-Concentration Camp Orchestra, concertizing throughout the American Zone of Germany between 1945 and 1949. Crafting their performances around the experience of forced displacement by wearing concentration camp uniforms, the musicians performed at the very sites of their trauma, including former concentration camps and Wehrmacht barracks. Through their performances, the Orchestra managed to negotiate the ruined postwar landscape by creating a community of survivors bound by common experiences and traumas.