Unpublished languages of the body and soul

Nico Max Richter

In January 1943, the transit camps opened by the Reich in Amersfoort and Westerbork (Netherlands) proved inadequate to absorb the influx of Dutch civilians deported; consequently, the Reich opened Camp Vught near 's-Hertogenbosch [North Brabant]. Like Natzweiler-Struthof, Camp Vught was a camp directly run by the SS outside the metropolitan territory of the Reich ; between 1943 and 1944, 31,000 prisoners were transferred – Jews, political prisoners, Dutch resistance fighters, Roma, Bibelforscher, homosexuals, common criminals, people accused of smuggling, and the homeless – of whom 420 men, women, and children died of starvation, disease, and abuse, while 329 were executed. In anticipation of the arrival of Allied troops after the Normandy landings, Camp Vught was evacuated by the SS in September 1944; At the end of October 1944 the camp was liberated by Canadian troops.

Numerous Dutch musicians and composers were transferred to Camp Vught, including the flautist and composer Everard van Royen and the conductor Piet van den Hurk . With the authorization of Commandant Karl Chmielewski, a professional orchestra of 25 musicians – mostly Jews – was formed under the baton of van den Hurk, among whom the trumpeter and pioneer of the baroque trumpet Pieter Dolk , the violinist Hans Domisse , and the guitarist Max Groen stood out. The orchestra inevitably varied in size and instrumentation due to the constant transfers to Westerbork and camps in the Reich's metropolitan territory, as well as the arrival of new musician prisoners; musical instruments taken by the SS from Jews and other transferred musicians were used.

Proficient in a classical repertoire and salon music, including even a parody about the train that led to the camp, the Camp Vught orchestra generally rehearsed in the mornings – in the afternoon, the conductor and orchestra members were assigned to cleaning duties in the Krankenrevier – and performed a weekly concert in a pavilion open to prisoners and camp authorities or for the SS Kommandantur in the camp's inner courtyard. After four months, the orchestra was disbanded by the new commandant, Adam Grünewald, and the musicians were once again assigned to hard labor.

The Dutch-Jewish composer Nico Max Richter (pictured above) also studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam, won the Prix Henry Le Bœuf with his Concertino for cello and five instruments , and in 1937 became director of the Amsterdamsche Studenten Muziek Vereeniging; his works include the chamber opera Amorys and his orchestration of Ernest Bloch's opera Baal Shem .

After the German occupation of the Netherlands, Richter joined the Resistance , dismissed the musicians from the student orchestra, and completed his medical studies. A victim of denunciation, he was arrested and imprisoned in Amsterdam during the night of April 17, 1942, and later in Scheveningen [The Hague]. On November 6, he was transferred to Amersfoort, and on January 18, 1943 , to Camp Vught. He participated in the camp orchestra's activities, and on August 1, 1943, he gave a chamber music performance. On November 15 of the same year , he was transferred to Westerbork, and later to Birkenau .

Schoolgirls Henriette [Hetty] Voûte and Gisela Söhnlein joined the Dutch Resistance using the pseudonym Piglet & Pooh (after Alexander Milne's children's book Winnie the Pooh ). They helped numerous Dutch Jewish children escape or hide. In June 1943, they were captured and transferred to Camp Vught, where they wrote the songs Wij laten de moed niet zakken, Het Kapo Lied, Onze luis heeft neten gekregen . In late 1944, they were transferred to Ravensbrück .

The 1940s marked the epic of not only the most daring forms of theatre but also of cabaret . Even great singers with proven operatic experience did not disdain to practice different genres of text reading and vocal performance. In the Camps, the professionalism of the singers was always safeguarded, but there were artists who developed different theatrical paths, such as the Nonsens-schlager, a genre of singing in vogue in those years in cabaret based on words of a homosexual nature.

From a strictly artistic perspective, the Camps should be understood as anomalous metropolitan realities; experiences of cabaret, opera, operetta, traditional singing, and café and nightclub entertainment almost touch, and instances of intermingling are not uncommon. Musicians transferred the metropolitan artistic frenzy to ghettos, concentration camps, Gulags, and military prison camps ; it is a cyclone that does not destroy, but rather restores human thoughts and actions, unleashing unimaginable brilliance and unprecedented languages of body and soul.

After more than 70 years, we are still in the eye of the storm.

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