Being there . . . for a few minutes to bear, nay, suffer, in pain the announcement of tworepublished McFarland titles dealing with holocaust topics. At the beginning of the ChristmasSeason? Why now? Well, especially now. Huh? YES, lest we forget, that’s why, and thank Godthere’s a McFarland Publishing Company to remind us World War Two holocaust-knowledgeable know-it-all buffs, enthusiasts, aficionados. Even our most harden moments ofdealing with atrocious evil-remembrances, will never, in trillions of generations, equal theexcruciating mind-tormenting torture and physical terror of those who were murdered in theholocaust fires. Yes, please, good Americans, a few moments to consider two relatively newtitles as special, very special Christmas gifts, perhaps both wrapped as one, to place under thetree lest the recipient, and us presenters, forget, or worse, ignore what five years of pure realhell on earth was all about. . .Reviewed and highly recommended by Don DeNevi as special Yuletide presents“ARCHITECT of DEATH at AUSCHWITZ – – A Biography of Rudolf Hoss”, by John W. Primomo.McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, North Carolina: 2020, 243 pages, softcover, 5¾” x 8 ¾”, exceedingly rare photos of Hoss and his execution, $29.95. Visit,www.mcfarlandpub.com, call free, 800-253-2187.“THE SOUND of HOPE – – Music as Solace, Resistance and Salvation During the Holocaust andWorld War II”, by Kellie D. Brown. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, NorthCarolina: 2020, 310 pages, softcover, 7” x 10”, exceedingly rare photos, $39.95. Visit,www.mcfarlandpub.com, call free, 800-253-2187.Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrook, Belsen, Belzec, Chelmno, Dachau, Sobibor,Treblinka, and a hundred-plus more, each site an unprecedented, shivering, illimitable hole ofhorror ending in systematic murder of as many Jews of Europe who could be identified andcaught. Their executions, in millions, were planned at a simple five-hour conference in a run-down villa at Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin, 20 January 1942. Among the planningparticipants were SS Lt. General Reinhard Heydrich, head of the German SD Secret Service;Heinrich Muller, Director of the dreaded Gestapo; and Adolf Eichmann, Head of the Jewishsection of the Reich Security Office, among almost a hundred other lo-er level Nazis officers.The main reason for such a joyful meeting, with Himmler, Goebbels, Goring, and Hitler to boredto attend since they were the original conceivers of the agenda, was to design the machinery oftheir “final solution” concept to quickly rid a soon-to-be a new world, an Aryan-ideal world, ofthe filthy scum of Europe first, then the earth, of the entire Jewish race.Thus, in part, sprang Rudolf Hoss, the greatest and worst mass murderer in world history.Author John W. Primomo writes, “As the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz, hemanaged killing 1.1 million Jewish innocents in one death camp alone! Unlike many of his Nazicolleague-friends who denied either knowing about or participating in the Holocaust, Hossremorselessly admitted, both at the Nuremberg war crimes trial and in his memoirs, that he
sent hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths in the gas chambers, even
describing the killing process. Primomo’s enthralling, semi-scholarly, biography follows Hossthroughout his life, from his childhood through his Nazi command, and eventual reckoning atNuremberg, death by hanging in mid-April 1947.Meanwhile, equally significant, “This Sound of Hope – – Music as Solace, Resistance andSalvation During the Holocaust and World War II”, by Kellie D. Brown, tells an astounding story,one that brings you to tears, then anger. She writes, “During World War II, Nazi leadershiprecognized the power of music and chose to harness it with malevolence, using its power topush their own agenda and systematically stripping it away from the Jewish people and otherpopulations they sought to disempower. But music also emerged as a counterpoint to this hate,with standing Nazi attempts to exploit or silence it. The oppressed stubbornly clung to music,wherever and however they could, to preserve their culture, to uplift the human spirit and totriumph over oppression.”Kellie’s treatise draws together the musical connections and individual stories from thistragic time through diaries, letters, memoirs, scholarly literature, and art pieces. She concludes,“Collectively, they bear witness to the power of music and offer a reminder to humanity of theimperative each faces to not only remember, but to prevent another cataclysm”.Kellie D. Brown not only knows where she has gone, and is still going, but also what she’swriting via her pure scholarship, knowledge, and insight, CLASSIC TIME! She is a professor ofmusic at Milligan University where she also serves as the chair of the music department andconductor of the Milligan Orchestra. There is no question she is the nonpareil in the field ofJewish orchestras, solos, and music in general in the German concentration camps of theHolocaust. Frequently, Kellie is called upon to lecture at colleges and universities on music inthe camps, 1941 – 1945. A Tennessee woman, she lives in Kingsport.“If we don’t play well, we’ll go to the gas.” – – Alma Rose quoted in Richard Newman and KarenKirtley, “Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz”.
Thanks, John W. Primomo and Kellie D. Brown! And a special bow to McFarland & Company.
