supplemental material

I’ve enclosed links to Night and the whole Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Different music speaks to us. To be honest, most classical music leaves me cold (with Symphony being one of the exceptions). But, if you liked the piece in this reflection, I recommend you go for a long walk and let the whole thing wash over you.

Where is God

Eliezer Wiesel (1928–2016) was a writer, professor, activist, and Holocaust survivor. One of his most famous books is Night, a powerful work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

The following is a short reading from Night about the hanging of three prisoners. I combined the short reading with the 2nd movement from The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Górecki (1933–2010). Górecki was a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is his most famous piece of music. It is a symphony in three movements. The first movement uses a 15th-century Polish lament of Mary, mother of Jesus. The second, a message written on the wall of a Gestapo cell during World War II. The third a Silesian folk song of a mother searching for her son killed by the Germans in the Silesian uprisings. The first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, and the second movement from that of a child separated from a parent. The dominant themes of the symphony are motherhood and separation through war.