Being there . . . for a few minutes to bear, nay, suffer, in pain the announcement of two
republished McFarland titles dealing with holocaust topics. At the beginning of the Christmas
Season? Why now? Well, especially now. Huh? YES, lest we forget, that’s why, and thank God
there’s a McFarland Publishing Company to remind us World War Two holocaust-
knowledgeable know-it-all buffs, enthusiasts, aficionados. Even our most harden moments of
dealing with atrocious evil-remembrances, will never, in trillions of generations, equal the
excruciating mind-tormenting torture and physical terror of those who were murdered in the
holocaust fires. Yes, please, good Americans, a few moments to consider two relatively new
titles as special, very special Christmas gifts, perhaps both wrapped as one, to place under the
tree lest the recipient, and us presenters, forget, or worse, ignore what five years of pure real
hell 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, 5
¾” 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 and
World War II”, by Kellie D. Brown. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, North
Carolina: 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 of
horror ending in systematic murder of as many Jews of Europe who could be identified and
caught. 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 planning
participants 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 Jewish
section 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 bored
to attend since they were the original conceivers of the agenda, was to design the machinery of
their “final solution” concept to quickly rid a soon-to-be a new world, an Aryan-ideal world, of
the 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, he
managed killing 1.1 million Jewish innocents in one death camp alone! Unlike many of his Nazi
colleague-friends who denied either knowing about or participating in the Holocaust, Hoss
remorselessly 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 Hoss
throughout his life, from his childhood through his Nazi command, and eventual reckoning at
Nuremberg, death by hanging in mid-April 1947.
Meanwhile, equally significant, “This Sound of Hope – – Music as Solace, Resistance and
Salvation 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 leadership
recognized the power of music and chose to harness it with malevolence, using its power to
push their own agenda and systematically stripping it away from the Jewish people and other
populations 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 to
triumph over oppression.”
Kellie’s treatise draws together the musical connections and individual stories from this
tragic 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 the
imperative 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’s
writing via her pure scholarship, knowledge, and insight, CLASSIC TIME! She is a professor of
music at Milligan University where she also serves as the chair of the music department and
conductor of the Milligan Orchestra. There is no question she is the nonpareil in the field of
Jewish orchestras, solos, and music in general in the German concentration camps of the
Holocaust. Frequently, Kellie is called upon to lecture at colleges and universities on music in
the 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 Karen
Kirtley, “Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz”.
Thanks, John W. Primomo and Kellie D. Brown! And a special bow to McFarland & Company.
