Janowska concentration camp: An orchestra of prisoners from performing the Tango of Death during World War II in Europe.
The photo of the orchestra was one of the indictments at the Nuremberg trial against the Nazis. During the hanging of prisoners of the Janowska concentration camp, the orchestra was ordered to perform a tango called the “Tango of Death”, during torture – a foxtrot, and sometimes in the evening the orchestra musicians were forced to play for several hours under the windows of the concentration camp leader.
On the eve of the liberation of Lviv, parts of the Red Army, the Nazis lined up a circle of 40 people from the orchestra. The SS-guards of Janowska concentration camp surrounded the musicians with a tight ring and ordered the Tango of Death to be played. The conductor of the Mund Orchestra was executed first. After him, on the orders of the camp commandant, each orchestra student went to the center of the circle, laid his musical instrument on the ground and stripped naked, after which he was killed by a shot in the head.
In the photograph, the cross indicates the commandant of Janowska concentration camp SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Friedrich Warzok.
Photo Information source:
- The newspaper “Red Star” No. 302 (5982) of December 23, 1944
Location: Lviv, Ukraine, USSR
Time when the photo was taken: 1944