Why Songs Are Like Letters (Bear With Me Here)

When looking at the last letters of the Holocaust, there are some main similarities: most people will try to reassure their loved ones of their safety and positivity. However, this meant that most people didn’t get a “last goodbye”. This left me extremely upset, and as I began to look through the letters, I searched for anything that would ease my mind. In the first of my two letters, the mother says something I found to be extremely significant: “Do you still remember the songs? I also sing them.” This was precisely the heartfelt thing I was looking for. On my drive up to college, one of the most important things was my playlist because it had all the songs that would help me move forward while also including all the important ones my mother used to sing to me as a child. When I miss her at college, I can listen to those songs and imagine her singing them to me extremely off pitch. I truly believe the same can be said about the little girl who received this message and submitted pages of testimony to honor her parents and family members who died in the Holocaust.

However, this brings up a more significant point that songs can be used just like letters and sometimes in place of them. Ruth (the child who received the aforementioned letter) could not keep most of the letters from her parents because her rescuers feared it would put her life in further danger. This meant that although the letters were amazing since they put Ruth in contact with her parents, they were not something constant that could be used to comfort Ruth whenever she needed it. However, the songs were something that Ruth could always call upon to bring her a little sense of her parents. Now bear with me here. This is when my brain starts trying to expand. Songs are a form of communication. Two people may not speak the same language, but notes are the same because music is a language of its own. Think back to when, as a child, you learned that before the Civil War, African Americans on plantations sang songs to pass the day, but sometimes these songs would be more meaningful and include instructions for the Underground Railroad. Now I would like to insert a disclaimer here. I do not think that the songs the mother was talking about in the letter are about how to escape, but I am saying they could have been. There could have been secret songs that people would memorize on how to escape Germany and get somewhere safe. My point here is that music (songs) can spread communication, remind people of their loved ones, and function, in some cases, as a letter between parties that may not have been able to communicate otherwise.