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One page of sheet music of a piece entitled "Le crucifié" (The crucified) by Alex Alicouli, a pseudonym for Aleksander Kulisiewicz, and dated II.XI.44, KLS [Sachsenhausen].

Photograph | Photograph Number: 45826
One page of sheet music of a piece entitled "Le crucifié" (The crucified) by Alex Alicouli, a pseudonym for Aleksander Kulisiewicz, and dated II.XI.44, KLS [Sachsenhausen]. The music and lyrics were written by Kulisiewicz during his imprisonment in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The lyrics were originally composed in Polish, and the piece was titled "Ukrzyzowany 1944." Subsequently, it was translated into French. The piece was inspired by a report Kulisiewicz received from members of the French resistance upon their arrival in Sachsenhausen, about an incident that took place in Presles, France (near Nice) in the summer of 1944. According to their account, Germans stormed a resistance safe house in the town, where they found and tortured to death a three-year-old boy.

One page of sheet music of a piece entitled "Le crucifié" (The crucified) by Alex Alicouli, a pseudonym for Aleksander Kulisiewicz, and dated II.XI.44, KLS [Sachsenhausen].

The music and lyrics were written by Kulisiewicz during his imprisonment in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The lyrics were originally composed in Polish, and the piece was titled "Ukrzyzowany 1944." Subsequently, it was translated into French. The piece was inspired by a report Kulisiewicz received from members of the French resistance upon their arrival in Sachsenhausen, about an incident that took place in Presles, France (near Nice) in the summer of 1944. According to their account, Germans stormed a resistance safe house in the town, where they found and tortured to death a three-year-old boy.

Date
1944 November 02
Locale
Sachsenhausen, [Brandenburg] Germany
Photo Designation
MAJOR CONCENTRATION CAMPS 1940-45 -- Sachsenhausen -- PRE-WAR/WARTIME -- Documents
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Aleksander Kulisiewicz

About This Photograph

Biography
Aleksander Tytus Kulisiewicz (1918-1982) was a law student when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. One month later he was denounced for antifascist writings, arrested by the Gestapo, and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Berlin. An amateur singer and songwriter, Kulisiewicz composed 54 songs during nearly six years of imprisonment at Sachsenhausen. After liberation he remembered his songs, as well as those learned from fellow prisoners, dictating hundreds of pages of text to his attending nurse at a Polish infirmary. The majority of Kulisiewicz’s songs are darkly humorous ballads concerning the sadistic treatment of prisoners. Performed at secret gatherings, imbued with biting wit and subversive attitude, these songs helped inmates cope with their hunger and despair, raised morale, and offered hope of survival. Beyond this spiritual and psychological purport, Kulisiewicz also considered the camp song to be a form of documentation. "In the camp," he wrote, "I tried under all circumstances to create verses that would serve as direct poetical reportage. I used my memory as a living archive. Friends came to me and dictated their songs." In the 1950s, Kulisiewicz began amassing a private collection of music, poetry, and artwork created by camp prisoners, gathering this material through correspondence and hundreds of hours of recorded interviews. In the 1960s, he inaugurated a series of public recitals of his repertoire of camp songs, and issued several recordings. Kulisiewicz's major project, a monumental study of the cultural life of the camps and the vital role music played as a means of survival for many prisoners, remained unpublished at the time of his death. His archive, the largest extant collection of music composed in the camps, is now a part of the USHMM Archives.

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Aleksander Kulisiewicz
Source Record ID: Collections: 1992.A.34
Second Record ID: Collections: RG-55.000
 
Record last modified: 2006-10-16 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1149372