holocaust

Sunday was Holocaust Memorial Day. They’re having Assemblies at school during the course of the week based on the holocaust and it put me in mind of the brilliant “Holocaust – a Music Memorial Film from Auschwitz” shown on BBC tv in 2005. For the first time since its liberation, permission was granted for music to be heard in Auschwitz and a number of leading musicians were brought there to perform music for the film. It featured extracts from Henryk Gorecki’s wonderful Symphony no.3, including a piece (see youTube link from the film) based on this prayer inscribed on a wall in the basement cell of the Gestapo’s headquarters in Zakopane, signed by Helena Blazusiakowna “18 years old, imprisoned since 26 September 1944”: “No, Mother, do not weep. Most chaste Queen of Heaven, support me always”.