My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing praises unto Thee; and my soul, which Thou hast redeemed. My tongue also shall tell of Thy righteousness all the day; for they are ashamed, for they are abashed, that seek my hurt. (Psalms 71:23-24)
Holocaust survivor Esther Bejarano, 86, has been making music all her life. As a teenager, she was a member of the Auschwitz Girls’ Orchestra, forced to perform as trainloads of Jewish prisoners were brought to the concentration camp. She is one of the last surviving members of the orchestra, having played the accordion. She continued to make music in her adult life, forming a musical group with her son and daughter in the 1980s. Now, she is making a new kind of music.
Bejarano has teamed up with popular German hip-hop artists, Microphone Mafia, to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. Bejarano and her children released two albums with Microphone Mafia, Per La Vita (Für das Leben), in 2009, and La Vita Continua, this year, and now she is touring Germany with the rappers.
“I decided to go with the rappers because now it is very modern to reach young people,” she says. “Nobody until now has done something like this, that an old woman like me goes together with rappers.”
Bejarano told Jewish News 1 that this work is different from what she normally does, but explained, “I am not rapping. The two boys are rapping and I am singing. They are making very wonderful speeches.” She says everything she sings, the hip-hop duo, Kutlu Yurtseven and Rossi Pennino, repeat in rap.
Initially, the gentlemen found the arrangement odd, but eventually the three realized they were on to something. Their music brought people together, showed that young and old alike can work together.
“I have been in the concentration camp, I have been in Auschwitz and I’m strictly against the Nazis, and I hope that the Holocaust will never be forgotten. We should never forget what happened then and we want to explain what happened, and therefore I’m doing the concert,” Bejarano added.
Bejarano lost both her parents and her only sister in the Holocaust. She escaped a death march days before the end of the war.
