An oratorio based on the Death Books (Sterbebücher) of Auschwitz Concentration Camp prisoners and poems by Tadeusz Borowski
“God created the world, man created Auschwitz,” wrote Imre Kertész. And nothing has happened since then “that would have abolished Auschwitz, that would have refuted Auschwitz.” The Holocaust cannot be reported in the past tense. –
Everything vanished like on stage. The dead are silent forever,
(Tadeusz Borowski)
And to us – the living – how to give voice when the heart is glowing with fire?
Slowly the hours flow, and the days count for centuries
And like a stone slab on our chests freedom weighs down.
The project
The 46 volumes of the so-called “Auschwitz Death Books” are among the few surviving original documents from the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. The SS destroyed most of the camp documentation during evacuation of the camp. The surviving books record the death of Auschwitz prisoners between 27 July 1941 and 31 December 1943. Their first and last names, religious affiliations, date and place of birth and date of death are listed.
The oratorio IMIONA NURTU. THE NAMES OF THE CURRENT aims to give the people listed in the “Death Books of Auschwitz”, a voice of their own to each and every one of them.
The recordings
In cooperation with the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, I offered visitors the opportunity to choose the name of a person listed in the “Death Books of Auschwitz” who was murdered in the camp in order to lend that person a voice. The recordings took place in mid-August 2024 on the forecourt of the so-called death gate of Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
In a second step, I wrote to people all over Europe. I invited them to lend their voice to one of the people listed in the “Death Books of Auschwitz” and to record the name of this person, date and place of birth and the date and place of their murder for the project.
I believe it is important that each individual name was spoken by a different person, that each of these people murdered in Auschwitz was given there unique voice. Because each individual voice opens the door to a person’s own biography, to a life lived, that was extinguished in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Death Books of Auschwitz
Under the following link you will find the complete list of the “Death Books (Sterbebücher) of Auschwitz”, in which you can research.
Broadcast on the Radio / Sound installation
The oratorio was composed from the recordings of all the “names of the current”, as the Polish poet Tadeusz Borowski called them, from Borowski’s poems, which he wrote as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp, as well as from sound recordings in the prisoner barracks of the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp. The radio play can be listened to online in the ARD-Audiothek from 01.09.2025 and will be premiered on SWR Kultur on 05.10.2025 at 11:03 pm. The oratorio will also be heard as a sound installation at the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Producers and sponsors
