Behind the Barbed Wire 78 RPM Bart van der Schelling Concentration Camp Songs
$
325
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Description
Behind the Barbed Wire. 3 record set, 78 rpm
Six Songs of Concentration Camps.
Sung by Bart van der Schelling and the Exiles Chorus.
Produced by the League of American Writers for the benefit of its exiled writers committee.
Directed by Earl Robinson.
From Time Magazine, 4th August 1941:
World War II has yet to produce a great song, but last week some of its saddest were heard in the U.S. The League of American Writers produced an album of records ($2.75) called Behind the Barbed Wire—six songs of the French, Spanish, Italian and German antiFascists who now rot in the French concentration camps of Gurs, Vernet d'Ariège, Argelès-sur-Mer.
The six songs were recorded in Manhattan by a Netherlands-born fighter in the Spanish Civil War, Bart van der Schelling. He wears his chin in a brace, is called "official singer" for the U.S. survivors of the International Brigades of the Loyalists. Singer van der Schelling is backed by an "Exiles Chorus" directed by Earl Robinson (Ballad for Americans). Some of the songs—the Spanish Joven Guardia, the Italian Guardia Rossa, the German Thaelmann-Bataillon, the French Au Devant de la Vie (music by Soviet Composer Dmitri Shostakovich)—were composed during the Spanish War. Most of them are in rough, plodding march time. The one which gives the album its name was composed by a German, Eberhard Schmitt, in the camp at Gurs. Its chorus, translated (not quite so lame in the original):
Behind the wire, our courage is unbroken;
We yield to no one! We're not broken reeds!
Jail or internment, we're masters of our lives,
Nothing counts with us but deeds! For where Germany's and Austria's sons may be,
One goal they cling to: Liberty! . . .
The 3 records are in very nice condition. Clean and no visible scratches or blemishes. One record has a tiny ding on the very edge. Cover is in very nice condition, with slight issues at the binding (from the weight of the records while beings stored vertically). Overall, I'd say this is in fantastic shape. See photos.
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