Makana Eyre

“Czechs, Germans, Poles, Frenchmen came to Aleks, sometimes in the barracks after working hours, sometimes out of doors, discreetly appealing to him to include their camp creation in the annals of his mind. “Aleks,” they would say, “do you have some room in your archive?” He would close his eyes and respond, “Dictate it to me.” Sometimes, a man might come back to him a month later to check if he had memorized his song accurately. Aleks welcomed the challenge because he could always reproduce the songs. Aleks memorized each line that a prisoner brought him, each comma, each semicolon, each dramatic pause, exactly as the hypnotist Roob had taught him to do in 1926 after the shock of a live wire destroyed his ability to speak. Over time, as Aleks memorized more and more songs, it felt as though an octopus of camp culture undulated within him, ever expanding as the hatred and harm and the most intimate longings of so many prisoners filled his being.”
― Makana Eyre, Sing, Memory: The Remarkable Story of the Man Who Saved the Music of the Nazi Camps