Arnold Schoenberg - A Surviror From Warsaw, 0p. 46

 

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Text with German and Hebrew Translated

I  cannot remember everything. I must have been unconscious most of the time. I remember only the grandiose moment when they all started to sing, as if prearranged, the old prayer they had neglected for so many years - the forgotten creed! But I have no recollection how I got underground to live in the sewers of Warsaw for so long a time.

The day began as usual: Reveille when it still was dark. Get out! Whether you slept or whether worries kept you awake the whole night. You had been separated from your children, from your wife, from your parents; you don't know what happened to them - how could you sleep?

The trumpets again - Get out! The sergeant will be furious! They came out: some very slow: the old ones, the sick ones; some with nervous agility. They fear the sergeant. They hurry as much as they can. In vain! Much too much noise, much too much commotion - and not fast enough! The Feldwebel shouts: "Stand at attention! Hurry up! Or do you want to feel the butt of my gun? Okay, you've asked for it!" The sergeant and his subordinates hit everybody: young or old, quiet or nervous, guilty or innocent. It was painful to hear them groaning and moaning. I heard it though I had been hit very hard, so hard that I could not help falling down. We all on the ground who could not stand up were then beaten over the head.

I must have been unconscious. The next I knew was a soldier saying: "They are all dead," whereupon the sergeant ordered them to do away with us. There I lay aside - half-conscious. It had become very still - fear and pain. Then I heard the sergeant shouting: "Number off!" They started slowly and irregularly: one, two, three, four - "Stand at attention!" the sergeant shouted again, "Quicker! Start again! In one minute I want to know how many I'm going to deliver to the gas chamber. Number off!" They began again, first slowly: one, two, three, four, became faster and faster, so fast that it finally sounded like a stampede of wild horses, and all of a sudden, in the middle of it, they began singing the Sh'ma Yisrael. 

 Male chorus:
Hear, O Israel:
The Lord is God, the Lord is one.
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thine heart,
And with all thy soul,
And with all thy might.
And these words, which I command
thee this day,
Shall be in thine heart:
And thou shalt teach them diligently
unto thy children,
And shalt talk of them when thou sittest
in thine house,
And when thou walkest by the way,
And when thou liest down,
And when thou risest up. 

For more on the composition.

After hearing the moving stories of some of the survivors from the Warsaw uprising, Schoenberg felt compelled to write this work, using text in English, some of which was drawn from the words of the survivors themselves, and Hebrew. The composition, set for Narrator, orchestra and chorus, tells of the German round-up of the residents of the Warsaw Jewish ghetto for transport to the gas chambers. Unhappy with the slowness of the process, the soldiers urge them to hurry before beating them. As the victims are led away they suddenly begin singing the hymn "Shema Yisroel" or "Hear, O Israel," a hymn to love God and for comfort and hope. Eyewitnesses have confirmed similar events in both the Treblinka and Auschwitz camps. Traditionally, the Shima Yisroel was chanted by Jewish martyrs and wise men as a final utterance, showing a trust in God's will in the face of devastation.