| Summary: | A profile of Francesco Lotoro, the Italian composer and pianist who has worked 30 years to recover, catalog, and perform music written during the Holocaust - including works written and performed secretly in Nazi concentration camps. Lotoro converted to Judaism after gravitating towards the religion from a young age. At the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, inmate orchestras were set up by the Nazis for their entertainment. The main function of the Auschwitz Camp Orchestra was to play marches and concerts. As an entire generation of musicians and artists were imprisoned or killed, Lotoro feels the course of European music would have differed drastically with their influence. He has catalogued over 8,000 pieces of music, which range from symphonies to tunes scribbled on discarded paper. Lotoro collects, arranges, and sometimes completes the works with great care. He argues the point of connection between life and death, in a place like a concentration camp, is music. Prisoners felt the music allowed them a sense of dignity, which Lotoro continues to work to preserve. Includes interviews with Bret Werb, music curator at the U.S. Holocaust Museum; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Holocaust survivor and former Auschwitz women's orchestra member; Waldemar Kropinski, son of composer Jozef Kropinski; and Christoph Kulisiewicz, son of composer Aleksander Kulisiewicz.
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