Conference Agenda

Music was doubtlessly part of daily life for French soldiers held in Nazi prisoner of war (POW) camps after France’s defeat in the early years of World War II; government records indicate that hundreds of professional musicians were among the soldiers captured, reports from camp inspections by the French government and the Red Cross regularly note the presence of orchestras and other ensembles in most camps, and compositions written in captivity were frequently featured on concerts both in the camps and in occupied Paris. Among other purposes, music served as an essential distraction for the prisoners who spent long years suffering in captivity. Imprisoned musicians spent their time writing new works, educating other prisoners about music, and putting on performances for audiences of captives.

How can we make sense of these musical diversions from captivity? Did they represent prisoners’ valiant attempts to retain their dignity in a dehumanizing situation, resistant expressions of French pride and cultural status in the face of German domination, or metaphorical sedatives that numbed prisoners to the direness of their situation? Directly following and decades after the war, former prisoners and historians published their perspectives on other so-called “leisure activities,” including classes and conferences, theater performances, and sports, taking a variety of stances on the question of what, exactly, it meant to be distracted from captivity. By placing examples of music performance, education, and composition within the framework of postwar discourse on diversion, this paper examines the ways in which music served to distract prisoners from the circumstances of their captivity and explores the tension between understanding these activities as a source of dignity or pride and reading them as a cause of complacency.