Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026 at noon on WVPE News2 (HD2)
The Pulitzer Prize-nominated and PRX Editors’ “Top Pick” documentary Their Music Survives: The Resilience and Revival of Jewish Music from The Holocaust, reveals an awe-inspiring music movement reborn from the hell of the ghettos and concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Consider: To be a Jewish composer or musician under the Third Reich’s reign of terror meant your next note could be your last. Their works were initially banned and labeled degenerate, their contributions to musical genres erased from public display. Later, as the murderous frenzy of the Holocaust exploded, imprisoned composers and musicians refused to be stilled. On strips of stolen paper they penciled their inspirations, played their songs, and hid their manuscripts, praying that even if they died, their music would survive.
Miraculously, it has.
Their Music Survives: The Resilience and Revival of Jewish Music from The Holocaust, travels from Pittsburgh to Washington to New York to Tel Aviv. Along the way, we meet conductors, musicians and others unearthing this lost generation of music and performing it for new audiences worldwide. They’re using this music to educate, to remember, and to correct a historical injustice. After 80 years, the beautiful works and incredible stories of these long-forgotten composers and musicians are finally being heard: Victims who, despite all attempts to strip them of their humanity, created music telling us of their times, their fears, their hopes, and their resistance to a world gone mad.
They may be gone, but their music, their essence, lives on.
For more information on the documentary and to get a transcript, go to www.theirmusicsurvives.org