Nazism and the Holocaust in Rock Music Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Remembrance. The song "Primo On The Parapet" is dedicated to Primo Levi, a Jewish Italian chemist and Auschwitz survivor who wrote some of the most absorbing books on the Holocaust. Which former front man of one of Progressive rock's mammoths composed and sang it on his album "The Noise" (1993)?

Answer: Peter Hammill (VdGG)

"I'll raise this toast to Primo, climbing up upon the parapet
with one final word of caution:
we must learn not to forget.

There's pain in remembrance,
but we must learn not to forget.

Here's a toast to Primo,
let's learn not to forget.
Here's a toast to Primo,
forgive but don't forget."

I owe my first acquaintance with Primo Levi to this eye-opening Peter Hammill song. If you ask me, every word Primo Levi ever wrote is recommended reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_Levi is a good starting point.

One reservation though on Hammill's "forgive but don't forget" conclusion, in Levi's own words: "Forgiveness is not a word of mine. It is wished upon me, because all the letters I receive, especially from young Catholic readers, take that stance. They ask me if I have forgiven. I believe that I am a just man, in my own way. I can forgive one man and not another. I can only consider justice case by case.".

2. Anger. "The Intense Humming Of Evil" is a hard-hitting song containing graphic concentration camp descriptions. Which Welsh band performed this song in their third album "The Holy Bible" (1994)?

Answer: Manic Street Preachers

The song opens with a recording from the Nuremberg trials. The following is its second verse and coda:

"Arbeit macht frei
Transports of invalids
Hartheim Castle breathes us in
In block 5 we worship malaria
Lagerstrasse, poplar trees
Beauty lost, dignity gone
Rascher surveys us butcher bacteria

Welcome welcome soldier smiling
Soon infected, nails broken hunger's a word
6 million screaming souls
Maybe misery - maybe nothing at all
Lives that wouldn't have changed a thing
Never counted - never mattered - never be"

An annotated version of the lyrics can be found at http://home.germany.net/100-496653/manics/tme/the_intense_humming_of_evil.htm

"The Holy Bible" encompassed other controversial subjects such as racism in the USA, Anorexia Nervosa and the death penalty.

On the sleeve of their second album "Gold Against The Soul" a quote from a Primo Levi poem, "Song Of Those Who Died In Vain", appears (translated lyrics can be found at http://www.thisisyesterday.com/lyrics.html).

3. Cynicism. In order to perpetuate, evil needs both evil doers and a massive indifferent lot. Which song by The Dead Kennedys opens with the following lyrics? "There's a prefab building and a funny smell / Around the hill outside of town / Every now and then we wonder / But we shrug our shoulders and get back to work / There's a railroad there and trains go by / And there's people locked in cattle cars / And have you noticed the French fries at the A&W / Taste a little strange?"

Answer: Saturday Night Holocaust

Jello Biafra and his Dead Kennedys were always willing to tread on controversial land. Maybe too willing at times, but their arrows were poignant and usually left a mark on their targets. Suggested reading:
http://www.deadkennedys.com/history.html
http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/6558/DKPAGE.HTM

"Saturday Night Holocaust" gives a wry look at people who preferred to put blinkers on their eyes. Full lyrics at http://www.deadkennedys.com/albums_give.html#10

All the answer options are songs from the excellent Dead Kennedys compilation "Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death" (1987).

4. Testimony. The song "Red Sector A" is told from the mouth of a prisoner focusing on his feelings and thoughts, reduced to survival in the hell he is at. The parents of one of the band members met in a labour camp in Poland in 1941 and survived concentration camps to be united and then migrated to Canada. Which band performed this song?

Answer: Rush

"Red Sector A" from the album "Grace Under Pressure" (1984) was written by Rush drummer Neil Peart. It does not explicitly mention the Holocaust, but Peart commented that it is a direct influence from a testimony by a concentration camp survivor (http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=3330).

Geddy Lee from Rush was born Gary Lee Weinrib. The story of his parents Mary (Manya) Rubenstein and Morris Weinrib along with illuminating information on the sentiment behind "Red Sector A" can be found at http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/22829/edition_id/457/format/html/displaystory.html

5. Provocation. Quite a few musicians did not come to deal with subject clean-handed. Probably the ultimate provocation is the song "Belsen Was A Gas". The band's manager (of Jewish descent, by the way) was a master tactician in getting them, and him, into the public eye. Fashion played a key role. Which is the band in question?

Answer: The Sex Pistols

Even in 2007, the provocation of The Sex Pistols lives on - promoting a teen cell phone Bell Canada (unintentionally) used an image of a girl wearing a "Belsen Was A Gas" badge. Later, Bell Canada pulled the ad and apologized (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2007/09/14/bell-holocaust.html).

One has to admit that Malcolm McLaren, the man behind the great Rock'n'Roll swindle, is a genius of sorts. More on him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_McLaren

6. Surrealism. In which song by The Fall are we witnesses to a surreal experience where the narrator is haunted by victims of Nazism?

Answer: Bremen Nacht

"Bremen Nacht" is a result of an actual experience Mark E. Smith, the off-centred frontman of The Fall, had where he felt possessed by victims of Nazism.

"The child's four-fingered bruises on my hip
Meant I had been one day possessed
Right through Bremen Nacht
Right on to Bremen Tag"

The Dresden Dolls lifted their name off a little known song by The Fall ("Dresden dolls and Nazi boys / Dance arm in arm to formless noise").

Another related song by Mark E. Smith and The Fall is "Who Makes The Nazis?".

The Fall lyrics database can be found at http://www.freehosting.hostrave.com/p/fall/lyrics.html

7. Loss of faith. For many, the Holocaust has shaken the base on which religious belief stands. "Can you believe, god makes you breathe / Why did he lose six million Jews" The progressive rock album which contains the above lyrics is named after the creature drawn on its sleeve, half-armadillo half-tank. What is the name of the song and performing band?

Answer: The Only Way (Hymn) - ELP

"The Only Way (Hymn)" is taken from ELP's second album "Tarkus" (1971). The song's theistic debate ends in a radical atheistic chord: "Don't heed the word, now that you've heard / Don't be afraid, man is man-made".

Regarding VdGG's "Scorched Earth", it is taken from their masterpiece album incidentally named "Godbluff" (1975). Sorry if you have been mislead by this.

8. Frustration. "Up to the checkpoint / Fill in a form / That deems you abnormal / In purely informal routine Back onto the train / They wish you good luck for your forthcoming journey The train pulls away / And it's just another day On the Dachau line And there's no reason / No reason to / No reason to understand" "No Reason" is a frustrated article on the senselessness of the banality of evil. The gifted musician who wrote and sang it had a safety pin stuck in his heart for punk music. This song is included in his album "Pillow Tension" (1994). Who is he?

Answer: Patrik Fitzgerald

Patrik on "No Reason":

"In the case of No Reason, I wanted to reflect the conspiracy of silence and
ignorance that people were forced to endure. I wanted to reflect the sense
of government organised killing and the sense of sadistic glee with which those involved in enforcing these things took part in the scenario.
I also wanted to reinforce the idea that the sense of 'why should i care'
carries on and has been responsible for exactly the same scenarios (as
experimented with by the Nazi government) occurring with regularity on just
about every point of the globe ever since."

In the same album, Patrik covers a song by Israeli Yehuda Poliker who is the son of concentration camp survivors from Thessaloniki, Greece.

Captain Beefhart's song "Dachau Blues" can be found on his album "Trout Mask Replica" (1969). Lyrics at http://www.beefheart.com/walker/lyrics/tmr/dachaublues.htm

9. Personification of evil. The opening song of the album "Reign In Blood" (1986) by US thrash metal band Slayer is "Angel Of Death". It focuses on the atrocities committed by a specific Nazi. Who is this Satan?

Answer: Dr. Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele was known as the "Angel Of Death". During his service in Auschwitz he specialized in performing horrendous tests and experiments on children, focusing on twins. More on the Nazi doctors in http://www.auschwitz.dk/doctors.htm (caution: contains graphic content!).

"Angel Of Death" has stirred controversy and Slayer have been accused of supporting Nazism, which they repeatedly deny since. On one hand, it seems that they suffered from the stigma of metal bands, while on the other they were happy to gain publicity (which they tried to repeat in 2006 with the song "Jihad"). More on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_Death_(song)

Lyrics of "Angel Of Death": http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/slayer/reigninblood.html#1

10. Fuzziness. This band's name is taken from the novel "The House of Dolls" (1955) by Israeli holocaust survivor and author Ka-Tzetnik (and, the band formed after the suicide of their lead singer also carries a controversial name related to Nazism). On the sleeve of their first release, drawn by a band member, a Hitler youth is seen beating a drum. One of their early songs mentions the prisoner number of Nazi officer Rudolf Hess. In one of their gigs, one of the band members shouts "You all forgot Rudolf Hess!". Having said all that, the band's lyrics are strewn with stark humanism and are light years away from Nazism. Which band is it?

Answer: Joy Division

Having listened to Joy Division for so many years, I can safely say that the Nazi references were a result of teenage fascination which has gone a bit too far. The autobiographic book "Touching From A Distance" by Deborah Curtis, the wife of the late Ian Curtis, spans the interesting account and background.

The "joy division" was the name given to the group of women, usually Jewish, who were forced to serve as whores for German officers in concentration camps. The book "The House Of Dolls" by Yehiel Dinur (who used the pseudonym Ka-Tzetnik) tells their story.

Rudolf Hess' prisoner number, 31G-350125 is quoted several times in the song "Warsaw" by the early incarnation of Joy Division, Warsaw (http://www.iancurtis.org/songs/warsaw.html). It is widely accepted that the band's bassist Bernard (Albrecht) Sumner is behind the cry "you all forgot Rudolf Hess" at the start of the song "At A Later Date" performed by Joy Division in Manchester's Electric Circus in Oct 2nd 1977 (it was recorded and released, and the band knew that...). Sumner was also responsible for the Hitler youth drawing and Gothic fonts on the sleeve of "An Ideal For A Living", the band's first EP. After Ian Curtis had committed suicide on May 18th 1980, Sumner and the rest of the band members formed New Order. New Order was the term coined by Adolf Hitler to describe his geopolitical target.

Recommended reading: http://ripitupandstartagainbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2007/01/footnotes-11-chapter-10-just-step.html

A small number of Joy Division songs directly deal with Nazism. For example, "No Love Lost" is a direct reference to "The House Of Dolls" and "Walked In Line" describes the complacency with which German people joined the fascistic effort.

I truly hope that taking this quiz was worth your while and provided you with an added value. Thanks for your time.

Source: Author gentlegiant17

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor ralzzz before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Not many rock musicians dared to tread the paths of this dark era. This quiz focuses on those who did, each using a different approach. Be sure to read the interesting info sections.

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>