Tango of Auschwitz, a song of remembrance
In the camps of the Holocaust there was music. Prisoner orchestras were made to play as people were marched, and survivors remembered tangos among the tunes, so that the phrase tango of death entered the memory of that time. To set a tango against Auschwitz is to hold beauty and horror in the same breath, which is exactly how memory works.
This song is a work of remembrance. It asks the listener not to look away, and to carry the memory forward so that it is never abstract, never only a date in a book.
Why bring it into English
Songs of remembrance must live in the languages the next generation speaks, or the memory fades with the last people who understood the words. Bringing a song like this into English is part of the mission of Jewish Songs for All: to keep the hardest and the most important Jewish songs alive for everyone, everywhere.
The full lyrics and a line by line English translation for this song are being prepared.