The main use of music, still little known, was initiated by the camp authorities from 1933: it was 'forced' music, played on orders by orchestras of prisoners. It constitutes a full-fledged tool of the processes of subjugation and annihilation. Its second use is the one made by prisoners spontaneously: tolerated by block leaders or sometimes entirely clandestine, this music took part in strategies of psychological survival and spiritual resistance to the concentration camp system.
The exhibition presents for the first time to the public numerous testimonies, instruments, scores and drawings made by women and men prisoners, as well as photographs taken by the SS. It also addresses several particular cases, notably French internment camps that became transit camps, and the camp-ghetto of Theresienstadt.